Everybody on Board: The Power of Collective Employee Engagement

I was having lunch with my client when she said.” I don’t believe in employee engagement.”

I was intrigued by her statement, since this client is a rational thinker.

She explained, “Companies often have employee engagement “initiatives” during which they give employees gifts or host employee events. Employees in turn, view these “initiatives’ as performance incentives and demand more for more performance. 

The result? 

Performance does not increase, and the company hosts another initiative.”

I know what she meant, I saw it before, and responded, “That’s not engagement, that’s a bribe.” 

Her eyes lit up” Exactly!”

We discussed some more and agreed that definitions were important since what is being practiced by some companies is not employee engagement.

So here it goes:

Employee Engagement is the emotional and intellectual involvement of employees with the work that they do.

Emotional refers to the way that the employees feel about what they do, why they do it and how they work. The leadership is involved in creating environments or Safe Workspaces that encourage a positive emotional response. 

The intellectual involvement speaks to how the leadership envisions employees, its philosophy around Human Resources or Human Capital and how to maximize performance as tasks are performed. For the employees it speaks of their ability, skills set, capacity for learning and how well equipped they are for the job.

Employee engagement is not done in a vacuum; it is set in the context of achieving the company’s strategic intentions or business outcomes.

This is not solely the leaders’ responsibility nor is it solely the employees’ responsibility.

Employee engagement is jointly the leaders and the employees’ responsibility.

The leaders provide the electrical socket in the wall, and the employee is the plug. 

Unless the two are connected, at the same voltage, there will be no engagement and it will be difficult to make anything work. Just as the socket needs the plug, as much as the plug needs the socket for current to flow so too the leaders and the employees need each other for engagement to occur.

What are your questions on #EmployeeEngagement?

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