Forget Engaged Employees, Do Engaged Culture Instead

According to Gallup, “Companies with highly engaged work forces outperform their peers by 147% in earning per share.”? That’s a pretty good reason to have an engaged workforce.? A more disappointing Gallup offering is, “Globally, 20% of employees are engaged at work.”? It is? a little better here in the U.S. where 36% of workers are engaged.

Logically then, to increase earnings, all we have to do is increase engagement. How hard can that be?? Just follow the fourteen Principles of Management, in particular to engaged employee are:

11.? Equity - Employees must be treated kindly, and justice must be enacted to ensure a just workplace. Managers should be fair and impartial when dealing with employees, giving equal attention towards all employees.

13.? Initiative - Using the initiative of employees can add strength and new ideas to an organization. Initiative on the part of employees is a source of strength for an organization because it provides new and better ideas. Employees are likely to take greater interest in the functioning of the organization.

14.? Esprit de Corps/Team Spirit - This refers to the need of managers to ensure and develop morale in the workplace; individually and communally. Team spirit helps develop an atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding. Team spirit helps to finish the task on time.

These principles were introduced by Henri Fayol in his book General and Industrial Management in 1916.??

Whoa, now hold on a minute. You mean to tell me that for over 100 years in which human nature and motivation has been thoroughly dissected, researched, and analyzed through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943), Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory (1959), and Vroom’s Expectancy Theory (1964); during when thousands of articles and books has been been written and published since Henri including Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954), Peters’ In Search of Excellence (1982), and Harter’s 12: The Elements of Great Managing (2006); with great motivational speakers the likes of Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, and Dale Carnegie showing us every step of the way; and Google providing over 218,000,000 hits on how to get employees engaged...all of this...in over 100 years...the best we can do is 36%?

I started paying attention to the term “engaged employee” a few years ago during a conversation with an Operations Manager whose company had yet another disappointing annual engagement survey with no marked improvement.? That was confusing to me because, quite frankly, I have never been concerned about employee engagement in the organizations I served. So I had to do some catching up, starting by researching what is an “engaged employee”.

The same Gallup says engaged employees are “those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”

Wikipedia defines it as,? “Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its employees.? An "engaged employee" is defined as one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.”

Investopedia calls it “A business management concept that describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward his/her job.? Engaged employees care about their work and about the performance of the company, and feel that their efforts make a difference.”?

I compared this to my own very informal, very non-scientific, semi-psychological survey (actually, it is called conversations) I have conducted over many years.? Asked to hundreds of people of various ranks from the floor to the tower; various degrees from dropout to Ph.D’s;? in various environment from low morale to high, the central question was “What do you want from work?”? And since it was informal, non-scientific conversations, there are no documentation or breakdown, only summary responses I recollect hearing:???

They want a paycheck.

They want to know their job will be there the next day.

They want to make a good product or provide a good service.

They want to be shown how to do their job.

They want the tools and instructions needed to do their job.

They want to make suggestions.

They want to work throughout the day without any problems.

When a problem does occur, they want to fix it.

They want to ask questions.?

They want honest answers.

They want to show others how they do their job.

They want to interact with their peers, boss, boss's boss, and customers.

They want to go home at the end of the day feeling like it was a good day.

They want to go to work the next day feeling like it will be a good day.

They want to benefit from their work.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty engaged to me.? And that is after waking up everyday, tending to personal, family, and household needs, and setting aside any mental and physical issues to provide ten to sixty hours per week of their time to make products or deliver services.?

It is a long list and I am still probably missing a few items, but carefully examine each “want” and you will see that it does not represent engagement so much as it does control. We all need some control over our lives, health, welfare, finances, performance, and how we feel.? For every “want” that goes unfulfilled, a little more control is lost, a little more helplessness sets in, and that is what chips away at engagement.??

How does that happen? Here are a few real life examples:

An operator was advised by another operator to wait for maintenance to replace a worn strip of magnetic tape on a machine, a very simple repair to do, because it was not her job.

A Principal admonished her Assistant Principal not to counsel teachers without her permission.

An experienced operator tries to explain to an Engineer how a new product would best run on his machine but was told to follow the Engineer’s instructions.

A Production Manager and QC Manager got into a very loud argument over defective products on the floor in front of operators and inspectors.?

A Purchasing Department must adjust material purchases toward the end of each quarter to assure the Vice President receives bonuses for meeting inventory goals while at the same time being held accountable for meeting on time delivery goals.

A Plant Manager rarely goes out on the production floor.

And I am sure there are many more stories you could cite. OK then, how do we get employees engaged? Back to Google.

Let’s see, there are 6 Wise Things Leaders do to Engage Employees, 7 Steps to Engaged Employees, 8 Tips to Engage Your Employees, 49 Employee Engagement Ideas, 59 Employee Engagement Ideas You Need to Know About…Gee, by my calculations, that is going to push the 218,000,000 Google hits on how to engage employees to over a billion ideas!? Of course, most of those ideas are recycled and can probably be reduced to less than a dozen.??

Contemporary employee engagement theories focus on treating symptoms. Survey employees, collect data, and analyze causes of disengagement. From there, train managers and supervisors on how to behave and what to say, requiring corrective actions for low engagement scores. Implement engagement programs (whatever that may be), communicate with positivity and sensitivity, and motivate and reward your way to success.? Of course, you will do these things within the same old culture, with the same leadership profile, following the same rules and policies, and thereby getting the same results year after year.?

I prefer a cure and as mentioned earlier, I was never concerned about employee engagement.??

My focus is always on the culture and how best to achieve dynamic results by getting the most out of people. My culture has a mission that starts at a baseline and then moves from one benchmark to another, not goals and objectives that divide and pull from the mission. It finds and develops leaders from top to bottom, those who can genuinely connect with people, regardless of whether they are MBA’s or high school dropouts. It grants authority to perform the jobs, whether it is a Plant Manager directly contacting a customer to resolve a problem, a Supervisor making last minute changes to meet a deadline, an operator shutting down the machine because of defective parts. It requires interactions involving all concerned on how to best run, how to fix, what are the alternatives, what to do next with all input considered equal even though all answers are not. It challenges talents and aspirations, values skills and expertise, and holds accountable performances moving people up or down, job to job to achieve success while moving out those who bring down the morale of those around them. It benefits employees through merit raises, advancements, bonuses, and profit sharing for meeting benchmarks. And it involves a sense of humor because it is just too doggone hard to be enthusiastic, absorbed, and emotionally committed to your job all of the time.

I have never conducted an engagement survey so I cannot honestly tell you if past levels would?have been 30%, 70%, better or worse.? My metrics were such as how much productivity improved, how much rejection decreased, how much costs reduced, and how much profits grew.? The better the results, the more I just assumed employees were engaged.

As a service to anyone reading this, I offer my own detailed and thorough survey to be completed by the leaders of your organization, free of charge.? The higher up the chain of command willing to take this survey, the less need for those below to do so.? Are you ready?

Question 1:? Do you want engaged employees?

That would seem to be a fairly obvious “yes”.

Question 2:? Is employee engagement a goal or a requirement?

If your answer is “a goal”, then you are probably already doing everything you need to do.? Continue administering annual surveys, conducting leadership training, having team meetings, filling out corrective actions, putting pictures on websites and I am sure you will see some improvements sometime in the future. Don’t forget, Google has got some great ideas.

If you say requirement, now that is a game changer. Then maybe you should consider creating a culture of job owners where partners are required to collaborate on how best to produce and provide right the first time, on time, every time. Where leaders are required to lead, coach, and train while all personnel are expected to succeed, fail, learn, build their expertise, and it pass them on. Where all personnel, regardless of positions or ranks, are required to work in unison to achieve the organization’s mission. Put that culture in place and you won’t have to worry about employee engagement. It just comes naturally with the territory.