How engaged are we with employee engagement?

I recently came across two different articles focused on the same fundamental issue - employee engagement.  The first article by Dov Seidman started with the very provocative headline of "(Almost) Everything We Think About Employee Engagement is Wrong".  The article  http://www.forbes.com/sites/dovseidman/2012/09/20/everything-we-think-about-employee-engagement-is-wrong/  got a lot of reaction from the author's readers and from those I shared it with.  And just this week there was a complementary article in my local paper entitled "The fine art of faking it".  

Both articles, in one way or another, touched on the "cost" of employee engagement efforts.  In one respect, this cost was referenced in terms of actual expenditures on extensive morale boosting efforts undertaken by all manner of companies and industries.  In another respect, the cost of not having engaged staff was identified in its impact on quality of customer service, product quality and other objectives.  In health care, there have been number of connections drawn between engaged staff and better patient outcomes.  So clearly there is a business imperative for leaders to improve their employee engagement and positively impact their ability to deliver on organizational mandates.

It's not as though there hasn't been a lot of effort and energy put into employee engagement efforts.  Certainly many organizations have put a significant amount of resources into surveying their staff, holding staff forums, revamping their employee recognition programs, emphasizing the importance of performance reviews and feedback, and trying to implement team-building exercises.  Unfortunately the effort, and the cost, has not been reflected in the results.  In some cases, despite these efforts, employee engagement scores have actually gone down.

So what's going on?  What are we missing?  What do we have to do differently as leaders to get better employee engagement and impact our ability to deliver quality service to our customers?  There are certainly a few clues to be found in both articles that certainly resonate with me personally and that I believe passionately in.  First, I believe that we have to make a very deliberate and conscious effort to move away from some of the mentality that exists in our leadership/management ranks that employee engagement is a cost or expense line on our financial statements.  This becomes a particularly challenging notion to overcome when employee engagement scores aren't going up as a result of current efforts and the need to achieve other "bottom line" results would seemingly benefit from a redirection of resources.  We need to change the tone of our approach from one of cost management to one of investment in our most valuable resource.

Second, we need to reconsider whether our customers are in fact our #1 priority - or should staff be our #1 priority?  In healthcare particularly this can be a very challenging discussion and one that I have struggled with myself.  However, if you accept the connection between quality of service and an engaged workforce then it seems clear that there must be a greater emphasis on staff and enjoyment of their work environment.

Third, and touched on by the picture above, leaders/managers must take steps to align all elements of the workplace to make it easier for staff to do great work.  Slogans, lunches, team-building exercises and similar exercises may create hope at the beginning of an effort.  They may also create expectations of positive change as well.  However, all of this effort is easily derailed once a staff member encounters the reality of a poorly done (or not done) performance appraisal, the lack of equipment to do his/her job, or the barrier of some bureaucratic process which confounds an ability to do good work.  Hence, why engagement scores can often go down when an employee engagement effort is launched - reality fails to meet expectations and cynicism rises.

Finally, I believe it is fundamentally important in all of these efforts at employee engagement that leaders be sincere in their commitment to such efforts.  Leaders cannot just be engaged at the launch of an employee engagement effort.  Even more frequent events - monthly or quarterly - in large settings are not likely to demonstrate to staff an understanding of their challenges or the barriers they face in trying to do good work.  Nor can an employee engagement merely be a priority or initiative of the human resources department.  It has to be a specific performance expectation of all senior leaders and departments. 

Ultimately as well, I believe that to be truly successful an employee engagement effort must come from a leader's own interest in other people.  If you really don't involve yourself with your staff and set that tone for your direct reports it's unlikely that you will make major headway in engagement efforts.  In addition, individual leadership actions outside of formal employee engagement events and pronouncements must match the direction and philosophy of the initiative.  Nothing will do more damage more quickly to employee engagement efforts if leaders are seen as not sharing in the same challenges, making the same sacrifices, or reaping the same rewards as their front line staff.

Ironically enough the best success in employee engagement is likely to come less from a focus on bottom line results as a driving force - profit, revenue stream, customer satisfaction, market share - than from a sincere interest in your people for it's own sake.  If you are genuinely interested and committed to your staff, prepared to truly engage with them on a day-to-day basis, then success on the organization's bottom line metrics will come.  Your employees will know when you are being genuine versus just seeing them as a means to an end.  Your leadership shows in every interaction you have and every action you take.

So how engaged are you with employee engagement?  It's a major effort and requires a lot of your energy.  Are you prepared for this leadership challenge?
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Greg Hadubiak, MHSA, FACHE, CEC, PCC
TEC Canada Chair/Executive Coach/Senior Consultant
hadubiak@wmc.ca

Helping leaders realize their strengths and enabling organizations to achieve their potential through the application of my leadership experience and coaching skills. I act as a point of leverage for my clients. I AM their Force Multiplier.