Big Ideas 2015: Employee Engagement - The Killer-App of 2015

In this series of posts, Influencers and members predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2015. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #BigIdeas2015 in the body of your post).

As the Industrial age saved humanity from the toil of repetitive hard labour in the middle of the 18th century, the Technology age was hailed as the saviour of modern white-collar labour forces. Why then, with instant access to global knowledge via computers and the Internet, and telecommunications and smartphone within reach of most organisations, does the utopian dream of liberation through technology remain a fantasy?

Why is this an issue?

As a global society, we find ourselves diving ever-deeper into a downward spiral of increasing working hours. A survey by Robert Walters showed that almost 30% of white collar workers in the UK are averaging over 50 hours at work, with those higher up the rungs and taking home the biggest pay packets being those spending the most time at work. Similar trends can be found in Australia, whose white-collar workers are topping the US and Japan for the average number of hours spent at work. In a more extreme case, according to both the China Youth Daily and the state-controlled China Radio international, claims that between 580,000 to 600,000 people a year (on average about 1,600 people a day!) are dying from preventable, stress-related diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. These deaths are being attributed to occupational stress and overwork.

Our work is literally killing us

Recent increases in rates of preventable heart diseases and strokes in the Western world, whilst not being directly attributed to stress-related overwork - ostensibly for insurance purposes - seem to correlate rather dangerously with the average numbers of hours worked. It seems entirely plausible to pose the question as to the origins of these medical anomalies. Simon Sinek, an ethnographer by trade, reflects, “our work is literally killing us”.

Another global trend is reflected in decreasing levels of employee engagement, with ‘relationship with immediate supervisor’ cited as the highest factor influencing engagement (both positive and negative). A recent 145-country Gallup poll found that only 13% of those surveyed were actively engaged in their jobs, whilst almost two-thirds (63%) were disengaged. Incredibly, a quarter (24%) were actively disengaged, meaning they were acting directly against interests of the company.

To give these astounding numbers a human face, imagine yourself as a passenger on the Titanic. Of the 100-person crew on board (rounded for mathematical simplicity), 63 of the crew members are looking out over the deck towards the ocean contemplating their lives back on land, 24 of them are taking time out of their day casting life rafts overboard, throwing paying customers into the ocean and generally making a mess of things, with the remaining 13 crew members running around trying desperately to correct course, fishing passengers and life rafts out of the ocean and avoiding the impending icebergs.

the greatest competition an organisation faces comes from deep within its own ranks

If the numbers are correct, then it seems that organisational preoccupations with external competition are totally unfounded. Instead, the greatest competition an organisation faces comes from deep within its own ranks.

What are we doing wrong?

The traditional solution for organisations in tackling problems of increasing complexity is to meet the problem head-on with ever-increasing complicatedness. Using the same two basic 'Taylorian' management pillars that were erected at the time of the Industrial age, the so-called 'hard' pillar (systems, structures, processes and metrics), along with the 'soft' pillar (Interpersonal relationships, feelings, personality, values), restructures, reorganisations and transformations have historically been built on a platform supported by one or a combination of both pillars.In a future of radical change, both pillars are no longer relevant.

diminishing resources and budgets are being squandered in a bureaucratic attempt to measure the effectiveness of processes

In responding to increasing complexity using the hard approach, organisations introduce new requirements, each with their own systems, structures and processes, in order to measure and manage their performance. Naturally, these new requirements are not measured alone, but are wholly integrated and measured against the existing business requirements and their systems, structures and processes.

The result is chaos. Departments are judged on how effectively they adhere to the new processes rather than on whether they achieve their targets. With the same labour force now tasked to deal with their own roles, as well as an ever-increasing complicatedness, interdepartmental competition increases and silos form, in order to compete for the quickly diminishing resources and budgets that are being squandered in a bureaucratic attempt to measure the effectiveness of the processes. The budget remains the same, but the workload increases.

The very same business practices that increase organisational complexity are precisely those that disempower employees from addressing the problems

Those left to take up the slack are the employees. Faced with the challenge, most humans possess a natural urge for competition, would relish the challenge, and are more than happy to roll their sleeves up to tackle the problem. But the hard approach throws yet another spanner in the works. The very same business practices that increase organisational complexity are precisely those that disempower employees from addressing the problems.

The hard approach ensures that adherence to systems and processes takes precedence over individual autonomy and personal accountability. Local strategic and decision-making powers which are best left to the lowest-level employees whose insights and knowledge equip them to make the best decisions, are instead moved up the chain to management, with employees relegated to task execution roles. Employees are judged on the decisions they make, yet the management structure ensures that they are stripped of actionable decision-making power. An attempt to address the problem by offering KPIs and performance bonuses does little to motivate employee engagement, as employees are stuck in an ever-increasing pile of useless, disengaging work. Dangling a carrot from a stick is a half-hearted attempt to address the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the problem.

Employees are judged on the decisions they make, yet the management structure ensures that they are stripped of actionable decision-making power

The managers don't have a much easier time either. According to studies by the Boston Consulting group, managers are spending 30% of their time writing reports and 40% of their time in meetings, leaving under a third of their time to manage their teams. Employees are disempowered and unmotivated, and managers are not able to dedicate the time to address their own performance objectives, let alone employing the soft skills necessary to engage their team.

How do we fix it?

The cure for organisational complicatedness is to address complexity with cooperation. By creating cross-functional teams. Issues in Production that could have been addressed all the way back in R&D can be avoided completely when a member of Production sits in for an hour on the weekly R&D meeting, sharing insights from his role and bringing back new developments to his team. A salesperson sitting in with the Marketing department can provide key insights into emerging trends, customer needs and pain-points, and the salesperson can suggest new marketing strategies his team can incorporate in their own efforts. These ‘James Bonds’ of the organisation - often personable, lower-level employees - infiltrate the other departments, gathering key intelligence and bringing it back to their teams. Soon, a culture of hallway conversations emerges (“John told us you guys in R&D are releasing a new version of the Widget next month, what are the features?”). The effect is that silos break down, with conversation, collaboration and cooperation emerging. It only takes the efforts of a few empowered people in strategic positions in the organisation to make a world of difference.

As teams cooperate, they are organically exposed to the interplay between their own work and how it affects the work of their colleagues. The effect is that employees and teams begin to see how their own roles fit into the broader framework of the mission and vision of the organisation. Trust and alignment naturally emerge.

If there is a single take-home point it is that employee engagement is the least measurable and yet one of the fundamental important factors in any organisation. An organisation will find difficulty attributing metrics to trust and collaboration, but they will certainly be able to measure their results.