For the fifteen plus years since it became a hot topic, employee engagement has been a stick-and-carrot arrangement for many organizations. Instead of employee satisfaction – indulgent pay, expansive benefits, fancy perks – engagement focuses on something deeper: employees’ emotional desire to achieve, be aligned, and to work for a culture that fits who they are. Once the difference became clear, engagement was the “carrot” that everyone was striving toward.Is the carrot still out of reach? Many companies have invested extensive time and resources, only to see minimal improvements in engagement (that “carrot” is still out of reach!).What needs to change?
It turns out that the workplace is only half of the engagement picture. In my latest book,I-Engage: Your Personal Engagement Roadmap, I explore the idea that an employee is far more than the person you encounter on the job. There may be a host of issues on the non-work side of the spectrum that affect engagement just as much as on-the-job factors.
For example, let’s take the this month’s challenge; the fact that many employees are returning from summer vacations. Managers should be empathetic, but the employees themselves have a responsibility of their own to play a part in rebooting their own engagement. In I-Engage, I encourage each employee to monitor their own engagement. If they’re experiencing disengagement, what can they do about it? There are large and small opportunities – learning a new skill, becoming a mentor – that could help them become re-engaged.
As I’ve presented the themes of personal engagement in some recent talks and workshops, participants have responded with great enthusiasm, asking themselves the tough questions about what truly engages them personally. This simple but provocative shift in engagement is a message I plan to continue to champion as I continue to speak to employees, managers, and leadership teams. I welcome your comments and ideas on the issue!
Cheers!
Bob
Bud Arquilla says
Bob,
Congratulations! I was wondering when and if you’d discover the “missing piece of the puzzle.” I figured it out about 1 1/2 years ago. I reached out to Marshall Goldsmith last year and spent a 1:1 day with him last year working through the “missing link” application for my Forumcare business model.
Over the past few years we’ve spoken a few times, but it seemed to me that you wanted to take your company in the’ selling materials’ direction. I’ve spent the past 4 years developing what I believe to be the most sophisticated, yet simple, employee engagement model ever created…and, I’ve applied it to the highest turnover industry there is, caregivers in assisted living and dementia care facilities.
Bud
Richard Vaara says
…..”employees’ emotional desire to achieve, be aligned, and to work for a culture that fits who they are.”
I was doing fine with this article until I began reading about the carrot. That concept throws me right back into the dungeons of major depression!!. A dangled carrot to me is perhaps that corner parking spot next to the building entrance, higher pay, a bigger office, a promotion. This implies that the only way I can become engaged is if the “company” gives me or promises me something based on useless or futile yardsticks such as performance, perfect attendance, etc.
Fortunately, Bob, your fantastic ideas of engagement germinated into what they are today, and has certainly revolutionized peoples’ lives and careers and the choices we now feel empowered to make.
At age 66, I am actively (and happily) engaged full time in a family owned company, and although I admit the existence of the carrot in the workplace scenario, it has no place in my own engagement profile.
The three concepts listed above, taken from your article, are precisely what drive me forward in the marketplace. That said, I do NOT expect my employer to hand deliver these engagement principles to me on a platter. It is up to me to at least pursue every avenue of opportunity within the company to HELP create the environment that best enables me to realize full and successful engagement within the organization. Employee Engagement is a giant conceptual business marvel, and I consider myself blessed to have access to this literal goldmine of information.
Sincerely,
Richard R Vaara
Everett, WA