Over a year and a half ago I started writing my series I titled, Thoughts on Leadership. The idea was to discuss what mid-level managers can do to better engage employees and to self-reflect on how my behaviors, impact others. A lot has happened since in my own life since I posted my first article in January of 2016 but the one thing that will never change is how people act and how they want to be treated while at work. This is why employee engagement is the last article of this series because it is the culmination of all of my thoughts on leaders that include communication, attitude, drive, support, skills, self-awareness, language of inclusion, and engagement.
What is Employee Engagement?
To start things off, what is employee engagement? From the employee point-of-view, “employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals” (Kruse, 2012). This is extremely important because each person is different and how they are engaged at work, not to mention their personal life, is critically important. Employee engagement is not just if a person is happy, but:
Engaged employees begin the day with a sense of purpose and finish it with a sense of achievement. They consistently bring high levels of determination, tenacity, energy and resilience to everything they do. They are dedicated to their jobs, and it shows in their enthusiasm, inspiration and pride in their work. They become easily engrossed in their roles, and time flows quickly for them when they are at work (Royal & Sorenson, 2015).
This is not a lot to ask for from employees. Most people want to have a sense of purpose, most people want to be determined, tenacious, have lots of energy, and be resilient at work. Most people want to be dedicated to what they do, show enthusiasm, pride, and inspire others. Most people want to be engrossed in what they do and want the days to pass by quickly because of their engagement with their work. But this is not the norm. In a Gallup poll rating employee engagement, 33% of the US working population is engaged (Royal & Sorenson, 2015) while globally, 15% of workers are engaged (Clifton, 2017)
These numbers are shocking and who is to blame? Are the managers, leaders, and institutions to blame for abysmal employee engagement? Are the employees to blame because they are not intrinsically motivated? Like everything, it is more complex than just resolving a binary problem.
Choosing the Best Possible Manager
One of the most interesting facts about employee engagement is just how important the individual manager is. No matter where you work, whether it is a large or small organization that has incredible notoriety or anonymity, your manager is the single most important component of employee engagement. When Gallup rates employee engagement scores, “managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units” (Beck & Harter, 2015). Much like the 33% of Americans who are engaged, this is shocking. This means that in the same organization and in the same department, one team can have a horrible engagement score while the team next to it can have an incredible engagement score. Same work, same place, same everything except managers.
This is why choosing the best possible person to manage is probably the most important decision any organization can make when it comes to their employees. The need to have managers that can manage, lead, and develop their employees is more important now than ever before and “more carefully choosing managers, and then providing those managers with the learning and tools to psychologically engage their teams, makes a movement” (Emond, 2017).
But why is it so difficult to find managers that can engage their employees? Part of the difficulty is that hiring managers is a largely un-scientific process that varies from hiring manager to hiring manager. Some places like managers who were top performers; some places like assertive managers that are tall; and some places use favoritism (and nepotism) to find their managers. And most places do little to actually develop their managers once they are managing and leading people. An interesting and depressing quote from an article on meaningfulness at work states, “quality of leadership receives virtually no mention when people describe meaningful moments at work, but poor management is the top destroyer of meaningfulness” (Hakner, 2016).
The need to have the right managers in place is not only important for employee engagement, but also so organizational resources are effectively used and not wasted. As stated by Beck and Harter:
“without the raw natural talent to individualize, focus on each person's needs and strengths, boldly review his or her team members, rally people around a cause, and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. This basic inefficiency in identifying talent costs companies billions of dollars annually” (2015)
The right manager is not about command and control, it is about collaboration, doing the right thing, having difficult conversations, connecting with your employees, motivating, and understanding the person across from you for the good of the organization and the the team.
Organizational Responsibility
The need to choose the best possible manager is important for every organization and also important is the need for every organization to have good employee engagement programs. If you have worked at a medium to large sized organization, you have encountered an engagement program. Usually an email comes out every six-months with a survey. Then a little while later the results are communicated with a commitment on how the organization is going to improve employee engagement. Then in the next leadership meeting, the next-level leader tells her or his managers that everyone has to do a better job with employee engagement but there is no budget and little time to carve out for engagement activities.
When it comes to employee engagement programs little time or energy is actually committed because of the busyness of day to day operations and the fact that many leaders do not see the value in them. That is why “employee engagement programs haven't worked at many companies because they haven't been done right or implemented thoroughly” (Emond, 2017). Much like choosing the best possible manager, thoughtfully implementing an employee engagement program is more than just sending out email and having meetings, it is about being engaged with employees and doing a thousand things every week and not just a fun activity once a quarter to raise a survey score.
Personal Responsibility
And finally, personal responsibility. For some, employee engagement is 100% on the manager and the organization while for some leaders, if an employee does not have intrinsic motivation then there is nothing the manager, the leader, or the organization can do to engage that person. Like everything there is a middle ground but when it comes to employee engagement, there is a great deal of personal responsibility we all must own.
From the article by Royal and Sorenson, a large part of employee engagement is choice; it is about how employees approach problems, life, work, happiness, and their own attitude (2015). This, mixed in with each individual’s own life’s journey makes employee engagement extremely complex. If an employee is going through hard times, does not feel connected to the organization or mission, is having medical issues, family issues, financial issues, or whatever, then not being engaged is a real state of being. There is very little a manager or organization can do, besides being supportive, to help employees who are struggling personally or professionally and that is why as with life in general, each individual need to own their own life’s journey and do everything possible to to improve, have a great attitude, and be engaged with life and work.
Postscript
Employee engagement is huge. As a manger, employee engagement combines everything from the eight previous, Thoughts on Leadership articles and is really the culmination of everything a manager does. If the overall team is not engaged, that means that as a manager you are not doing your job and although this might not be an issue with your leadership team (because they are oblivious or do not care) it is a serious issue with your employees, their productivity, and their ability to effectively get the job done. The best course of action as a manager is to take personal responsibility and be 100% engaged with your employees. Focus on their development, their needs, and the challenges they face everyday, and employee engagement, for most of them, will be stellar.
References:
Harkner, J. (2016). Meaningful work not created, only destroyed, by bosses, study finds. Retrieved from http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressrelease/id/35796
