Why Most Organizations Will Never Engage Employees

I want employees to be engaged.  Every year,  I spend time asking employees what the organization can do to be more engaged. I hear the same comments from teams: more food,  fun picnics, more training options, recognition, options for idea-sharing, understand how their work impacts the world around them, accountability, better communication and collaboration, etc.  

Theories of motivation in psychology support what these employees tell us: in order for people to be truly motivated,  they must feel safe,  competent in their work,  autonomous,  and achieve confidence and commitment in their employer.

As a society,  our systems and policies actually perpetuate a lack of engagement?   How?

We ask them. 

We take their ideas,  and now we are responsible for their engagement at work.

An organization cannot engage employees. An organization can create and foster an environment where employees choose to be engaged to their fullest potential.

Engagement is the responsibility of the employee to achieve the best results. 

Business results are the responsibility of the organization.

Within that context, there’s a systems issue that reinforces employee non-engagement:  Business policies that do not address the work.

Ditch The Employee Handbook

Organizational policies limit employee engagement.  The Employee handbook focuses on hours and work location: PTO, dress code,  “flex schedules.”  No policies address the work.

Employees are paid to do work.  When leaders understand their role in empowering teams to achieve the best results,  rules around hours,  location,  and time are irrelevant.   The employee handbook is useless.

Train your Leaders

When conversations between an employee and leader are centered around hours or location,  three key components of employee engagement are challenged: autonomy, relatedness,  and competence.

Stated simply, employees feel that they are being treated as children,  they are not connecting the conversation with the customer impact,  and they recognize immediately that their leader has lost sight of the skills they bring to the table and the work they are required to do.  They disengage.

Yet leaders are trained to enforce compliance of these out-dated rules that limit employee engagement. Train your leaders to manage the work, not out-dated policies.

Our systems are broken.  Our policies work against us, actually limiting our ability to achieve productive and brilliant teams.

Press Refresh.

How do we change that? Teach leaders to recognize and reinforce engagement. Help teams to understand the expected results and clarify how they will achieve these results.

If individual performance waivers, address the performance immediately. Most importantly, facilitate agreements that support teams in doing great work.

And ditch the employee handbook. It’s sooo 1980ish.

The Career Quadrant

I’m not a millennial.  I’m one of the GenXers…but more on the cusp of GenY by personality.  My world is different.  I have about 10-15 years of experience in my world of work today, and I’m faced with opportunities.  I am told jobs for people like me are prevalent and will continue to become increasingly available as the Baby Boomers retire.

My career hasn’t prepared me for this.  I survived the recession.  I lived through times when I was told “just be happy you have a job” and “other areas are laying off people left and right.”  Those words became a mantra for me and my team as we reminded each other “it’s not as bad as the place that is laying off half of their staff.”  The regular career ladder wasn’t available during my time.  We created our own jungle gym of experience to keep us challenged, taking jobs when available but more often working beyond our responsibilities.  For 10 years, we didn’t (we couldn’t) move to another job.  

We were isolated from new ideas. Training budgets were cut. For many years, I was the youngest on my unit by about 10 years. Ideas were stagnant with no pressure from new staff to update practices.

Now, we are confused.  We have so many opportunities, more than our parents, our friends, our leaders, our mentors…more than we are prepared to handle.  We have opportunities to take over management and leadership roles as our mentors begin their retirement and end our mentorship.

All while the crush of technology changes is suffocating our survival skills.  Let’s face it:  who can compete against someone who grew up with ipads in their elementary?  We had desktop computers and Oregon Trail on DOS systems….they didn’t move, folks.  They didn’t move.

To help us all focus (and give us a touch of sanity), I designed a focused discussion to help people identify their interests and goals during the madness.  It doesn’t help people update their technology skills (haha!), but it does give them focus.

 It’s best accomplished in 20 minutes (quick thinking) in an interview format.  We know the best ideas and those that are closest to our heart are spoken out loud first.

Here’s how it works:

Split a piece of paper in half, then in quadrants.  Number the Quadrants from left to right.  Then, fill in the following:

Step 1: Think back on your past…going back to your very first job, volunteer opportunity, and what you do when you relax at home…What do you like to do? What brings you passion, energy, and motivation to get out of bed in the morning?

List Interests (at least 10):

Step 2:  What don’t you like about your jobs?  What is challenging to you?  What would you like to avoid?

List Challenges (at least 10):

Step 3:  If you were to wave a magic wand and in 3-5 years you would be working your dream job, what would you be doing?

List Dream Job or list of work responsibilities here:

Step 4:  What do you need to DO to get there?  What do  you have control over?  What do you have influence over?  How can you make progress toward your goals?

List To Do’s here:

Look back at the quadrant.  What just happened?  Either you answered the last question with complete confidence (and a feeling of embarrassment) or you stumbled through it, wondering what step #3 is supposed to be for you.

#3 helps you realize your potential and for people like us that literally does mean “the sky is the limit.”  Dreamers, pragmatists, and in between have walked away with a renewed focus on themselves after this conversation.

Test it out.  And please let me know about your experience.

I keep writing these crazy blogs because you tell me they’re useful (and it’s nice to get this stuff out of my head! 🙂  What do you think?