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Discover How to Engage Disengaged Employees

Published: Sep 21, 2016
Discover How to Engage Disengaged Employees

Written By Michael Hardbottle

Are you feeling frustrated by your inability to increase the levels of engagement in your organisation? Have you begun to think that some people just can’t be engaged? This article seeks to consider the factors that are at play in disengagement and more importantly offers some suggestions on how they can be overcome…

So, you’ve completed your engagement survey and yet again one area of the business is reporting lower levels of engagement and satisfaction than the rest.

“They just aren’t ‘wired’ like that”-

“They just aren’t wired like that” the battle cry goes up! “They don’t need that fluffy stuff, that soft and feely stuff – they just want to come to work, do the job and go home and WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT????”

What is wrong with that?

That particular manager is missing the point! Gallup’s regular meta-analysis consistently demonstrates the correlation between positive engagement and improved customer ratings, increased profitability and productivity, reduced turnover, reduced safety incidents, lower absenteeism, increased quality and less shrinkage (theft).

So, whilst it is true that people who are not emotionally engaged can come to work, do a good job and go home, what potential are you leaving untapped? By tapping into an employee at the emotional engagement level you are unleashing their discretionary effort.

 

Screen Shot 2016-09-21 at 10.26.28 Images from Gallup

A person who I used to work with likened this to the process of becoming a Dad. Having once been a proponent of the ‘people can still do a good job and not be engaged’ camp, he had an epiphany! When considering his new role of being a father, he said I could easily do all of the functional tasks like changing nappies, bathing, feeding etc – but could I do a really good job of being a Dad if I wasn’t emotionally invested in my new son?

What seems like common sense to the converted, isn’t universal in the majority of organisations. So, what is going wrong? Is it that whilst some people are hardwired to want or need to be emotionally engaged, others just don’t? Is there some correlation with personality that no-one in the psychometric fraternity is letting on to that genuinely render some people ‘switched off’ in engagement terms? Is it more to do with managers mindsets and resistant scepticism that is to blame? Or is it a lack of skill, capability and confidence of how to engage employees?

Is engagement more about nature or nurture?

The relatively recent work around Self-Determination Theory from authors such as Deci, Ryan and Vansteenkiste can offer us some insights. They concluded that there are some universal, innate and psychological needs that transcend time, gender and culture. They summarised these as the need for;

  • Competence
  • Autonomy
  • Relatedness

However, whilst they found that humans are inherently proactive in the pursuit of these needs, they found that they don’t happen automatically and they need to be nurtured from their social environment.

Could we argue that the command and control practices in the industrialised economies have conspired to ‘turn off’ those innate pro-active desires? Are we still in the relative infancy of more enlightened management practices? Ask yourself the question, in those areas of the business that traditionally post reduced levels of engagement and satisfaction, how would you describe the prevailing leadership style? What are the levels of empowerment and trust? How much are those teams encouraged to problem solve and innovate? How prescriptive are the tasks and processes? Do you have the answer?

If we, therefore, assume that the teams or individuals in question aren’t a different species, that we are all wired in the same way to have these innate needs; why do some teams or functions consistently post lower levels of engagement and satisfaction, despite operating in the same organisational context. Or, why do some organisations never really get their employee engagement agenda off the ground? In our experience, it can normally be attributed to a ‘lack of’ something, one of the following Big 3!

Lack of …….

1.  Lack of commitment

Whilst most organisations wouldn’t refute the overwhelming case for employee engagement – they may even say that they encourage employee engagement, and give their employees a voice in the organisation. However, there can be a disconnect between their belief in the principle of engagement and what happens on the ground. Call it what you will – purpose, ethos, vision, values or culture, if an organisation doesn’t truly value engagement, it will be absent from its operating structure, job requirements, process and systems.

Organisations that have high levels of engagement have sponsorship and role models from the top of the organisation. Consider this in your organisation – are the job descriptions focused on tasks or are they focused on responsibility or behaviours? Are the people processes focused on detailed what to do and not to do or are they focused on empowering and trusting employees?

2.  Lack of experience

Despite the compelling research, some managers simply don’t believe it! Their experience encourages them to think it is quicker, cheaper and easier to tell people what to do. Many managers simply lack the experience of having great role models, who have demonstrated in concrete and irrefutable ways the value of engagement. They have perhaps never experienced how it feels to be valued as an individual, to have your ideas listened to and acted on, to be trusted.

Organisations that have high levels of engagement recruit managers who are good people managers and have transparency about those expectations and what happens in the event they are not fulfilled. Going back to McGregor X and Y theory – would you say that Managers in your organisation genuinely trust their teams to do a good job or do managers feel the need to impose rules, regulations and restrictions to get the job done?

3.  Lack of skills

Having a motivated and engaged workforce requires managers to have a key set of skills and attitudes. These skills need to be nurtured and developed within an organisation. Skills such as empathy, listening, building trust, collaboration, coaching, developing others need to be articulated as part of the requirement of being a manager.

Organisations that have high levels of engagement see the development of their managers as an ongoing activity that’s part of the day job. What are the stated expectations of managers in your organisation? What are the managerial behaviours that are valued in your organisation? Are they the same thing?

The reality is that shifting the needle on engagement, can be done, there are many examples of where it has been achieved BUT, and there is a but, it requires a discipline in leadership, a discipline in behaviour and a discipline in practice. Lip Service in the form of an annual survey that collects the data but does relatively little about it can never be the answer – so what is?

Key Steps

  1. Create the engagement vision – what does it look and feel like to work here, how should your employees experience your company, what behaviours bring that experience to life.
  2. Hire great people managers – people who can translate your vision into reality, from leaders who set the tone, to managers who are empowered to act.
  3. Develop key skills – not just in the classroom, but in everyday interactions, support managers in particular, to clearly see the impact of their behaviours
  4. Hold people to account – ask every employee what is working and not working for them and enable managers to see engagement data as a fundamental part of their business performance and intelligence
  5. Have an ongoing conversation – not a one-off survey, but an ‘always on’ dialogue about the things that impact on engagement
  6. Create alignment – engagement needs to be reflected in organisational practice, systems and processes, be aware of all of the subconscious signals that bombard employees from every working interaction and ensure they reflect the vision