Don't just measure Employee Engagement, measure Employee Apathy

A recent Harvard business review article suggests that feeling ambivalent about your boss hurts your performance even more than disliking them does. Ambivalence can eventually lead to a state of apathy, where one lacks interest, care, or concern.

Apathy involves little feeling and an absence of heart and spirit, resulting in a loss of passion at work. When apathy kicks in, the mind and hands may carry on in the short term, but in the long term, the employee says goodbye to efforts critical to engagement.

As I mentioned in my most recent newsletter, burnout emerges because of emotional or cognitive exhaustion. While burnout minimizes expanding efforts, the emotional investment may be greater than ever, even if those emotions are negative. Often emotional engagement can be a mirror of positive emotions in the form of anger, anxiety, and a preoccupation with problems in one’s job.

Apathy, unlike burnout, is the absence of emotion, and an unwillingness to emotionally invest in one's work. In our book, ENGAGEMENT MAGIC: Five Keys for Engaging People, Leaders, and Organizations we discuss a concept called expectancy theory.

The Apathy, unlike burnout, is the absence of emotion, and an unwillingness to emotionally invest in one's work. One of the concepts that we talk about in our book ENGAGEMENT MAGIC: Five Keys for Engaging People, Leaders, and Organizations is expectancy theory. This is a theory states that motivation is made up of three factors: expectancy (the perception that effort will lead to performance), instrumentality (the perception that performance yield results), and valance (the perception that the results will produce a reward of value to the individual). This partially explains why people choose certain behaviors instead of those that they believe will lead to a desirable and worthwhile outcome.

At the theory’s core, the individual believes they can perform at the level of proficiency needed to attain that desired result. This is a hallmark of high self-efficacy and self-esteem. Apathy is the dissonance that occurs between what one expects from their work and what they are willing to give.

Apathy can also be described as a complete shift of locus of control from the intrinsic self to factors outside of one's control. Why put in effort if it will not yield results? And especially, why give extra effort when extra incentives are not yielding individual rewards? Often apathy comes when a sense of autonomy has shifted or diminished. When individuals who are used to a high degree of autonomy (i.e., an internal locus of control) suddenly lose their autonomy to bureaucracy or poor management, problems tend to manifest in two ways:

Resignation. While accepting what comes their way and doing their best, individuals absolve themselves from responsibility and follow authority figures blindly. Resignation can be useful in high-stress situations, but prolonged resignation causes deep apathy and psychological suffering.

Learned helplessness. In this well-known mental state, first described by psychologist Martin Seligman, individuals learn through repeated episodes of failure that they are powerless to change or improve their current conditions. They eventually feel this is permanent and accept a total lack of control over their circumstances.

We see these problems emerge in high command-and-control organizations. Managers with high levels of authority take choice and control out of the employees’ hands, so when circumstances require the employees to think for themselves, they lack the capacity to do so. Apathy (marked by resignation and learned helplessness) is the ultimate “why even bother” type of emotion.

On a larger scale, macro-economic and social factors are also dissolving some of the choices that we have as individuals. We are becoming more beholden to large-scale shifts in economic, climatic, social-political, and emotional stability. As our sense of control erodes, apathy may take its place. The organizational ecosystem may be a fitting microcosm of apathetic shifts in the world at large.

What can organizations and leaders do to understand and reduce apathy?

1.?Create a compelling vision. Individuals that care about their work understand the “why” behind it. The best-in-class organizations – those that attract the most talented and motivated people are those that have created a clear and compelling vision for the future. Moreover, the vision and goals are compelling because leaders authentically espouse and properly demonstrate them.

2.?Leverage autonomy. To overcome the emotional states of resignation and learned helplessness, individuals must feel a sense of control over aspects of their job. This could be anything from giving customer-facing employees the freedom to choose how to best take care of customer needs, to allowing people choices in remote working. Giving autonomy to people in their jobs allows them to be more self-determined and build greater self-efficacy.

3.?Lead with empathy. Emotional resignation and apathy often occur because individuals feel that no one sees them or their efforts. Leaders reduce apathy when they listen to, understand, and see things from the frontline’s perspective. Feeling a connection to a leader or colleague often elicits emotions that motivate individuals to fulfill their core job responsibilities or even go above and beyond.

In the current climate, we face huge obstacles as a society and as individuals. Being apathetic-especially when the stakes are so high- is the worst option. It is surprising what can be achieved when people are given the choice to do good work. The organizations that will thrive in this environment are those that overtly fight the plague of apathy.