Wasting Money on Employee Engagement?

In my last post, I made the point that many employee engagement (EE) initiatives are a hoax.  In this article, I will elaborate on that point and assert that most investments in EE are a waste of time and money.  This may be offensive for those of you who are EE professionals.  In fact, when I discussed these points with a close colleague who does EE for a living, his response was “Are you out of your mind!”  So at the risk of alienating or angering the EE community, let me make my point.

First, if you’ve been involved in EE efforts for some length of time, you will relate to the following scenario:

A senior executive decides the organization needs to improve its employee engagement.  A small team is formed and they buy the services of a reputable EE consulting company.  The effort is rolled out with great fanfare, employees are strongly encouraged to have their voices heard, and there is a corresponding flurry of effort to respond to the survey results.  However, after 3-6 months, the energy level is down and the topic is rarely discussed in leadership meetings.  One executive expresses dissatisfaction with the consulting firm hired to do the survey and assist in implementation.  At this point, the initiative goes on the trash heap with other “failed” projects and is soon forgotten.

What went wrong?

Nearly every EE professional I’ve worked with has a similar story to tell.  You see, the effort was initiated on the false premise that the company could do something to “make” the employees more engaged.  Therefore, after the pixie dust settled and the consultant took their magic wand to their next project, the effort died (in some cases quickly).  The point of my previous article was that the decision to be engaged or disengaged is a personal choice that can be influenced by the company but never coerced.  When companies invest money to bring the latest consultant or guru in to “fix” their engagement problem, they are building on a false foundation and once the hard work begins and positive results haven’t started pouring in, leadership can lose patience and confidence.  As an EE professional, you can relate to the frustration of working with an executive team that demands fast results, wants visible progress, and then blames you or the whole notion of EE for having been a waste of time and money.

Don’t get me wrong – the executive suite has a lot to do with creating the environment for engagement.  But if you’re looking for employees to embrace their work and support the company, engagement starts with first-line leaders and supervisors.  Policies, culture, and resources can be improved to enable the engagement process to unfold, but if first-line leaders lack the training and support to be effective, employees on those teams will decide not to engage.  Any initiative pushed from the top down is doomed to fail from the beginning if not accompanied by an equally strong or stronger focus on first-line leaders.

Consider a different approach.  First review company policies, culture, and environmental factors to ensure consistency with the values and objectives of the organization.  Address areas of misalignment where necessary and enable employees to perform at their best under all circumstances.  For example, if your vision or policies state that you value innovation, yet managers routinely discipline employees for bringing forward new ideas, the disconnect will create disengagement.  Enabling performance is what the executive team can do best, not trying to force engagement to happen.  Second, start working closely with first-line leaders.  Make sure they have the training and support they need to be world-class leaders that employees admire and want to work with.  While this might not be considered “engagement” in the purist sense, the net result is the same.  Something as simple as communication training and coaching can go a long way to improving the effectiveness of a new leader.  Companies frequently invest in this type of support for their senior executives, but often, habits and poor leadership styles are already ingrained at that point and more difficult to change.  Start early and avoid the potential issues later.  Also help your first-line supervisors connect the dots between their teams and your bigger picture.  Give them tools and resources to have that dialog on a regular basis.  You might consider some illustrations or frameworks that allow these supervisors to speak to the company’s vision and strategy in simple, practical terms easily translated to a range of work activities.  If supervisors begin feeling connected with the company’s strategy, it will positively affect the teams they lead.

So next time you’re tempted to spend a lot of money to roll out a new EE initiative, take a moment and think carefully about your objectives.  Is your organization prepared to capitalize on an employee engagement effort?  Are your policies, procedures, and culture aligned and consistent?  Are you doing everything you can to support your first-line leaders?  If you can answer yes to all or most of these questions, then the added investment of a survey and some outside assistance may be a good investment.  If not, I would recommend you wait and work to address these issues first.  Save your money until you’re better prepared.  The types of things I’m recommending are usually within the capabilities and resources of the company – you don’t need to pay an “expert” to tell you what should be common sense. 

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

The Hoax of Employee Engagement

Why does a Gallup study show “employee engagement” across US industries has been stuck around 30%?   It’s because employers believe they can force engagement to happen.  It’s as if a program or initiative will magically produce better results.  In the hope for a special button companies can push to deliver engaged employees, companies are investing millions in consultants, surveys, and projects that focus on elevating engagement.  What a waste!  Most of what is peddled as employee engagement is nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

Employee engagement has become the latest business trick to increase productivity, retain talent, and grow profits.  An entire industry has emerged offering surveys, tools, and consulting that are focused on improving engagement.  These efforts fail to deliver on their promises and some have the opposite effect.  I suggest the majority of these investments have been misplaced – employee engagement is nothing more than a gimmick designed to give companies a quick fix or boost.

So, what exactly is engagement?  Engagement is an emotional choice, not  something you can do to someone.  While “to engage” someone or something is an action, engagement requires an emotional response.  Can a company “engage” its employees and ultimately expect positive results?  The cliché “happiness is an inside job” is also true for engagement - engagement is an inside job.  At the end of the day, whether an employee feels engaged is a personal choice, not something a company can impose on its people.  It all comes down personal choice.

I suggest that enablement is preferable to engagement.  When you enable someone, you empower them.  It’s not what you “do” to improve engagement, but how you behave.  When you look at companies reporting higher levels of engagement you find culture, policies, and values that encourage individual achievement aligned and synchronized with the company’s strategy.  Employees choose to be more engaged in the success of the organization because they feel connected and valued.  This isn’t a subtle difference in language -- it runs deeper into the soul of the organization and how that organization views its human resources. 

While well intentioned, engagement programs and initiatives miss this vital element.  If employees lack empowerment, they are demotivated from making the effort.  Without enablement, these efforts by the company are hollow.  Employees ultimately feel manipulated instead of valued.  Most of us have seen cases where surveys are used to gauge the level of engagement.  Yet when months pass and no fundamental change is noted, employees conclude it was just another show.  A year passes, another survey, and employees ignore it.  Why waste the time responding when the last survey produced nothing of value? 

To improve engagement, start with enabling employees to perform at their best.  Equip them with tools and provide an environment that values contribution, creativity, and connection.  Company-wide, one-size-fits-all initiatives fail to address the fundamental issue of how an individual’s efforts contribute to the greater whole.  Engagement requires a more personal, one-on-one approach that no project or initiative can provide; it is a full contact sport.  Standing up at a company all-hands and espousing how much employees are valued is impersonal, insufficient, and lacks specificity.

If engagement is what you’re looking for, start at the bottom with individuals, not groups.  Work with line-managers and help them connect the dots clearly between what their teams do and how their efforts contributes to and are valued in the greater whole.  This requires a personal level of interaction that is usually absent from organizations. 

Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.  Improving engagement happens one employee at a time. 

More on employee enablement in the coming weeks.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.