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.