No one can argue that deep employee engagement should be the goal of any organization, yet employee engagement remains low, and recent data even shows it's declining! Where is the disconnect?
Business journals and organizations like SHRM bang the drum on the benefits of employee engagement. You can find it in the news headlines, and deep engagement is primary focus of even the biggest consulting firms like Gallup and McKensie & Co.
Experts agree there is no better indicator of job satisfaction. It benefits the organization and the employee with significant:
Increase in profits
Decrease in turnover
Decrease in absenteeism
Decrease in workplace stress
Increase in employee wellness
Further, Gen Z workers yearn for purpose and connection to their employer, and the ability for them to make a difference and be valued are high on their list of what is important.
So what is the disconnect? Productivity is sluggish and workers are experiencing more stress and unhappiness in the workplace with the level of disengagement increasing. What are businesses getting wrong on employee engagement?
Businesses Conflate employee feedback and engagement. A high survey response rate may be an indicator of engagement, but survey responses represent feedback, not engagement. Engagement is active and participatory and generally leads to collaboration. It involves ideation and even vision as people creatively and collectively form a shared mental model of an idea, project, problem, or solution. As an important side note, another counterproductive position of business leaders is to dismiss negative feedback as anti-cultural and therefore archeological. This is a huge mistake, as the feedback is reflective of the "real" culture, and provides areas for focus and attention.
No knowledge management practices around employee engagement. Higher-ups separated from the daily operations don't realize that front-line supervisors and middle managers don't have time to respond to unsolicited employee engagement, let alone draw it out for action. Engagement needs structure and ways to facilitate momentum (like mapping). Further, it is imperative for frontline workers and groups from underrepresented populations to get a boost in problem solving, engagement, and collaboration skills. This facilitates impactful contributions which will increase their visibility and promotability and shift the perception of their capabilities in the minds of executives and coworkers. This will at the same time, boost their confidence, which is critical to success. The bonus is a staff with increased capacity!
Meeting structure should be intentional, but has been allowed to develop organically. Meetings consume significant hours of the work week, and their frequency is increasing with remote work arrangements. These are high-network sessions that often contain high-dollar decision makers. If they aren't maximized for engagement, they aren't maximized for productivity and represent the biggest drain on company resources! Meetings are ideal for employee engagement, yet many businesses spend little attention on improving their impact on business outcomes.
Fixed mindset that few workers are capable of deep thinking. This is a big one! In reality, chances are, very few employees are deep thinking at any level. There is research that indicates the mind is hardwired to make a decision, and we must force ourselves to delay this compulsion. Get any group of people together, set up the right environment and train them on just a few cognitive moves-and they can generate great ideas and options that could exceed a room of high intellect. Data and research demonstrates that deep thinking can be learned (see Cabrera Lab)!
To bridge the gap between the ideal and the real, businesses must rethink their approach to employee engagement. This involves recognizing engagement as a participatory process, implementing structured practices to capture and act on employee input, maximizing meetings for engagement, and fostering a growth mindset that encourages deep thinking throughout the organization. By doing so, businesses can unlock the full potential of their workforce, leading to the very benefits that engagement is supposed to bring: increased profits, reduced turnover, and a happier, healthier workplace.
Lori G. Fisher, PMP
PLS Management Consulting
Purpose | Leap | Surge
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