A number of years ago when I worked at the big corporation, I and many thousands of other employees were herded off to an auditorium where we participated in a festive shindig – a celebration of our great company. It was a hoorah hoorah occasion designed to animate and excite us to work harder for the big corporation. It had loud music, balloons, inspiring speeches from the CEO and others from the executive team and stories from would-be employee heroes who had gone that extra mile for the customer. The tempo was carefully managed to invigorate us, deliver important messages about how lucky we should feel to belong to such a great company, and finally leave us feeling exhilarated and ready for excellence.
In fact many employees (including myself) were bewildered by the whole experience. We left feeling cheated that the company executives felt that such a ‘cheap’ production would motivate and inspire us. Each day we had to deal with complex problems, manage difficult customer issues, take risks or complete arduous tasks. The shindig was banal and had no relationship to daily life at the big corporation – it left a lot of people dissatisfied and disengaged; especially when annual wage adjustments were maintained 1 per cent below inflation several months later.
Since then in my roles as a manager and consultant I have been fascinated by what employee satisfaction and engagement and its relationship to employee retention and performance. Employee engagement nothing to do with shindigs and a lot to do with the intellectual and emotional link between the employee and their employer. Its a bit complex and less tangible, buts its worth thinking about if you’re looking for a competitive advantage.
Engaged employees feel highly committed and motivated to perform for their employer. The reality of engaged employees can be exciting – people who want to make a contribution, who are prepared to work that little bit extra and achieve their goals and have pride in their accomplishment. If you have ever worked in this environment you will understand how rewarding and profitable it is. If you haven’t (like so many) you’re missing out on one of the great elements of modern life.
For the post war generation the work ethic was about doing what you could do for your country, and being grateful to be alive with the wealth to pay off a mortgage. Most production and service jobs were menial so for the average employee, work was basically about taking directions from someone with authority beyond reproach, and obeying a few baseless rules – if you played the game you had a job for life. A good worker arrived on time, was diligent, honest and dependable while unquestioningly followed instructions from an autocratic manager who had achieved his measure by his staying power, golfing prowess and general ability to fit in with the rest of the ‘boys’ (management team). Most companies of the era were privately owned with poor accountability and low transparency. Maleness was a key criteria for reaching management and gender (and race) discrimination were normative prior to the 1960’s and a womans place was subservience within the home or in menial jobs. Company performance was carried by the massive economic growth of the 1950’s and 60’s, protected by tariffs and subsidies, and low regulation. Satisfying an employee beyond financial reward was unnecessary and extraordinary.
The concept of job satisfaction gained impetus from the work of Herzberg in the 1950’s and 60’s which suggested that peoples work performance was impacted by ‘motivators’ and ‘dissatisfiers’s ( Try Googling Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory). In this theory satisfaction was impacted by such factors as achievement, recognition, career development and the nature of work. While the science behind Herzberg’s theory is a matter of debate, it makes important contribution by trying to describe the complexity of human motivation and performance into the context of workplace. Prior to this, psychological theories such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs had described the idea that human fulfillment involved satisfying a range of physiological, psychological and intellectual needs. Again while the validity and conclusiveness of Maslow’s proposal is contentious, it highlights the breadth of of human motivations which might propel a persons behaviour. Other theories have attempted to capture the psychological processes involved in motivation, for example, the role of rewards, individual preferences and work outcomes and process theories such as equity, expectancy and goal-setting theories.
It was the baby boomers’ whose post hippie work aspirations started to incorporate career opportunity, personal growth and and achievement, in the 1970’s. Coupled with changing values, the increasing population and massive growth in the wealth and prosperity of western nations during this period provided a platform for the evolution of a more complex understanding of people in the workplace.
Over the past thirty odd years, the approach to has become increasingly sophisticated. Of course the practice has lagged behind the theory, particularly in traditional industries (eg banking, insurance, government etc.) as it was still the most conservative of people who grew to fill positions of power in traditional industries. However, the explosion of the Dot.com entrepreneurial high risk industry at the turn of the century, which relied on attracting young go getter generation Y workers, helped perpetuate these new attitudes to workers.
The modern idea of employee engagement aims to present a more comprehensive framework of people at work by addressing not just the ideas of job satisfaction, but the factors which drive emotional and intellectual fulfillment from work. For example, a theory by Stairs (2005) includes concepts such as pride in the company, fairness and trust and job challenge. Professionalism, respect, participation, communication and ethical behaviour are also common themes. Corporate citizenship as defined by Organ (1998) includes altruism, courtesy and civic virtue and conscientiousness. Environmental strategies are a modern example of aligning a corporations practices to employee values.
These more recent approaches to engagement reflect a trend for companies to build their employee management strategy and culture around the values of their target employee groups. This is a reversal of the post war scenario where employees were expected to fit in to the organizations culture.
In my experience, a couple of things seem to be important when developing effective engagement strategies. Firstly, the things that employees value and that motivate them vary considerably. Generation, gender, education level, profession and lifestyle are key factors but individuals are quirky and you can’t presume that everyone responds identically. The manager with a deft hand at managing employee engagement is sensitive to the individual differences amongst their staff – knows who to guide, who to catch and who to leave alone to get on with things. This idea was described by researchers Hersey and Blanchey in their Situational Leadership Theory (though this is another subject).
Secondly, given the variation in values across employees, a company needs to discover the values relevant for its employees rather than presume any single theory. The discovery process can incorporate employee surveys and focus groups as well as as educating managers about the nature of engagement to enable them to become sensitive readers of their staff’s values. The latter issue can be particularly important where you have an older generation (Gen X) of managers supervising younger employees (Gen Y), or a sub-group of professional employees in a non-professional workforce (or vice-versa), for example. Many managers I have seen have failed to engaging their employees – often because they are too young, inexperienced and lack confidence with people. They are often too egocentric, pre-occupied with their own gains and insecure within the company structure. Even if they know the theory they fail too execute it (you can find out pretty easily by doing staff surveys). Alternatively they are older, poor learners with inflexible, out of date values. (In both cases, exceptions to the rule should be valued).
Thirdly, it is unclear what the value of these types of engagement factors are relative remuneration benefits. The answer again varies across different employees and labor market contexts. Consequently, this must be incorporated within the discovery process.
Fourthly, it often means breaking down long-standing cultural traditions particularly in conservative autocratic companies.. This can be hard work and may only have value if the company needs to improve its competitive advantage in its target labor markets. Mid you there aren’t to many companies that can remain aloof from generation Y labor markets any more – and if you can then you’re probably near the end of your product life-cycle anyway.
The consequences of engaging employees is that you’ll keep them longer, they will be more productive, creative and innovative. They will care more about the quality of work they produce, they’ll take less effort to manage, provide better customer service and they’ll be more prepared to deal with urgency and temporary impediments. Altogether, they will make for a better business.
As labor markets get more competitive, product life-cycles get shorter, and markets more competitive it’s a pretty useful skill for a company to have – probably the most essential when it comes to managing employees.
