Why Employee Engagement Tells Us Nothing About Anything - In Isolation

I can't tell you how many large corporations I've worked with that tell me they have high engagement/pulse scores but can't figure out why they have low trust and other problematic results.

Employee engagement is inherently a measure of how people feel about "the company" - not about each other - which is at the heart of what makes the wheels go round with regard to almost everything else in the real world including companies and educational institutions.

If trust is low or, as we've found, more likely to be distrust among the employees and toward the company - engagement can still show up as being just fine. And this is a big problem.

To extrapolate some other meaningful connections to things like satisfaction or better financials is simply magical thinking.

It doesn't mean this seemingly important connection tells us anything at all. In fact, most of the time one has nothing to do with the other.

It's more like a party trick of sorts that has made a lot of software executives very wealthy and kept many HR employees very busy and makes for a good "agenda item" at a board meeting, but has done very little to actually make any difference to any given employee or team. And if you don't agree, see for yourself.

Simply randomly pick employees from your organization and ask them how useful they think employee engagement surveys are. Just ask them if they think they change anything about the way they experience their work and lives every day or make anything better. Assuming they'd tell you the truth (which is not guaranteed if they don't trust you), you probably already know that they would say, which is "No".

A few years ago a meta-analysis was done to check the validity of many standard, "go-to" Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology and management constructs that we've been relying on for decades to tell us this or that regarding organizational success measures. And what the researchers found was that over 80% of these constructs should be thrown out because study results could not be replicated or generalized - therefore scientifically speaking - they are invalid.

There are lots of reasons why researchers can claim in journal articles and popular press that there is a "relationship" or correlation between engagement, satisfaction, profit, etc. Management and I/O studies tend to limit the variables they look at together because to get a "statistically significant" empirical result that's worth anything at all in terms of drawing the interest of journal publishers, researchers can't look out too far or be too complex in their thinking. It would take too much time and the tenure clock ticks loudly.

That causes another problem which is that they also often use relatively small convenience samples of students in their own institutions to find the statistical sauce they need so as not to perish from lack of publishing.

But these kinds of findings just don't generalize when you step out into the real and very messy world. Organizations are complex, living organisms that have their own character based on the millions of individual human beings who work for them around the world. So we have to go beyond what we know and seek out multidimensional constructs and solutions that are truly valid and reflect as much of the context of reality as possible.

The other issue that just keeps getting ignored or buried is that correlation does not equal causation. We don't know for example if employee engagement causes better results or if better results cause employees to be more engaged or if something entirely outside the realm of either is causing the result.

Here's what we do know.

For more than 15 years we've consistently found that high Virtual Distance actually causes workplace and educational havoc.

We've demonstrated time and again that we have the authoritative methodological and experiential stance to make this claim.

It takes a lot of time. It takes complex, systems thinking to build generalizable models that make sense in the real world. It takes a strong working knowledge of how both statistics and things like calculus and other mathematical tests can be used to check and recheck if results are both reliable and valid (because you need both) to make any claim of value to practitioners and those looking for facts - not just a statistically significant answer that has very little vetted justification.

And you need tons and tons of data over long stretches of time in the environments you're seeking to improve. And all of these requirements are just not career friendly to those looking to make a mark in what has become a bias toward habitually addictive short-term thinking and goals.

Make no mistake. Much of what academia produces is interesting and worth consideration.

But to bet the corporate or educational farm on isolated constructs that are not properly tested in any sort of expansive organizational context and don't even include how people feel about each other or themselves within that context, is simply a waste of time, money, resources and irritates employees to no end via survey fatigue.

It belies their own common sense that the results are not taken that seriously for their benefit - but are there to more likely check a box because it's a box we've been checking forever and have frankly forgotten why - other than to keep the wheels of business norms spinning without truly reflecting on what matters most to human beings (no matter where they work) - the same people that make up the work engine that drives the highest number of dollars to those at the organizational apex.

We have to stop and think more deeply and broadly about where to go from here at this time - right now.

With what feels like a "biblical" moment when we are suffering the most profound global plague ever seen on planet earth under these most specific conditions of almost 8 billion people simultaneously using some sort of digital box to connect them, economic collapse for most, worldwide protests in reaction to the unmasking of social injustices that have been another kind of plague on our humanity for thousands of years, a climate that we've made more and more toxic to our own survival and the 6th mass extinction of thousands and thousands of plant, insect, land and sea animals that keep our world healthy and balanced - in just a few short years - we need to do better than just running pulse surveys and making false claims to make a few more bucks because that's what we've been doing since the days of Fredrick Winslow Taylor who's profound disdain for workers led to mechanistic management more than 100 years ago and yet astonishingly is still the footings on which most organizations run.

Consider this: If most of us put ourselves in others shoes - of those in their later teens and early 20s for example, and could imagine for a moment living through this most special part of our life - our most important coming of age - at this time in history, we would see that past generations left us with an absolute global disaster and existential threat to our future. We would care very little for ill-informed management strategies and instead try if we could to recreate the world of work and education to meet the epic demand for compassion, empathy and related actions needed to heal our world and ourselves on a large scale; directed specifically at saving ourselves and humanity - as we can still remember it in its directly experienced authentic form.

If we then put ourselves back into our present role as leaders, managers, faculty, etc. and decide we want to truly revolutionize our institutions for the sake of leaving behind something hopeful and joyful for the sake of our children and their progenies, we can start with a simple notion:

Our employees and students are human beings FIRST. We need to care most and lead with that clearly in the front of our mind - always.

Next, in that re-humanized context, we can work toward helping others to "produce" AND to deeply learn given their relationships to other human beings, the world around them and to themselves.

Virtual Distance is a good place to start because that was its intention from the very beginning and the solutions we developed as we learned how to control it have proven to work extremely well and open up new lines of sight to better outcomes. It helps us start thinking and acting in truly new ways, however it's just one tangible start.

We have to do much more including throwing out the notion of "organizations" as we know them and instead, imagine and build both healing and sustaining institutions that serve this societal purpose while making "enough" money to serve all without creating divisive and species-killing Kings.

Our children are depending on us to help them because they are running out of time to help themselves all by themselves.

For more please visit www.thepowerofvirtualdistance.com