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Why All the Fuss About Employee Engagement?

Definitions of employee engagement abound. This is the one I like the best:

Engagement is the willingness and ability to contribute to company success – the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work in the form of extra time, brainpower, and energy. 3

Employees who are engaged are emotionally committed to their work and to their organizations. Engaged employees show up to work and give their best. They offer up new ideas and suggestions. They are positive and energized. They are interested in their organizations’ success. Engaged employees display an “I care” attitude.

Disengaged employees are not emotionally committed to their work and their organizations. They show up to work, but only do the minimum amount required. They typically don’t make suggestions, offer up new ideas, or in any way do more than what is required to collect their paychecks. The disengaged employee will often display an “Is it Friday yet?” attitude. They strongly resist change, and rarely, if ever, offer suggestions or ideas for improvement.

As a result, innovation and productivity both suffer. Absenteeism abounds, and when the disengaged do show up, they spend their time thinking about when they can quit and find a better job someplace else. And what if they stay? In that case, the disengaged employee can make their co-workers miserable.

Just how pervasive a problem is disengagement? It’s a problem that cuts across global boundaries, job types, and industries.4 Research reveals that barely 1 in 5 employees are engaged on the job and the rest fall into some category of disengagement.5

In general, there are two broad types of disengaged employees: the actively disengaged and the passively disengaged.

The actively disengaged, which comprise about 8 percent of the workforce, can be understood as the gossips, the whiners, and the overtly resistant to change. They are the employees who will deny responsibility for setbacks or challenges, often blaming them on other teams or departments or on organizational policies. They project a negative attitude about everyone and everything. Worse yet, because misery loves company, they often try to undermine the success of others or attempt to bring others onto their negativity bandwagon.

Although actively disengaged workers make up less than 10% of the workforce, they are toxic, and capable of doing tremendous damage. When I work with leaders in my live workshops, I often ask them how much of their time, effort, and energy as leaders is put into managing this “bottom 10%” and undoing the havoc they create. The answer is uniformly, “Far too much!”

While not as overtly negative and destructive as the actively disengaged, the passively disengaged aren’t really happy at work. Outside the workplace, they aren’t advocates for their company or its products and services. Worse yet, they don’t fully understand the impact their actions have on organizational goals and objectives. This is often a result of leaders not engaging in clear communication that fosters trust, open dialogue, and other drivers of innovation and productivity.

Enhancing employee engagement can yield tremendous and measurable business benefits. Consider:

•Higher levels of engagement are strongly related to higher levels of innovation.6

•High engagement correlates strongly with measurable improved organizational performance in key areas such as shareholder return and annual net income.7

•Engaged employees stay at their organizations, reducing the high cost of turnover.8

Given the tremendous benefits of an engaged workforce and the high cost of disengagement ($370 billion annually due to lost productivity in the U.S. alone), improving employee engagement ought to be a top priority for leaders at every level. It is also the responsibility of every employee to enhance their own engagement as well as that of their peers.

The great news is that the way you communicate with those you lead and those you work with (and even how you communicate with yourself) can have a tremendous impact on employee engagement, especially on those who are passively disengaged. Communication significantly impacts many of the major drivers of employee engagement, such as:

•The quality of working relationships with leaders, subordinates, and peers

•Clarity of job expectations and importance

•Trust in leadership

•Feedback

•Conversations about career advancement/opportunity

If you communicate in a manner that conveys respect and avoids the words and phrases that trigger defensiveness and animosity, you can do your part to enhance employee engagement within your own sphere of influence. If you communicate in a way that is clear and confident, you inspire trust and encourage dialogue.

Obviously, enhancing employee engagement on a company-wide level is more than a one-person job. Employee engagement is a complicated issue that requires effort at all levels of the organization. Upper management in particular must buy into the importance of engagement and enact an appropriate engagement-boosting strategy within the workplace.

However, any large employee engagement initiative is doomed to fail if individual managers, leaders, and influential employees are not doing their part in day-to-day communication and interaction.

That is where this book comes in. It is loaded with practical communication tools, tips, and techniques you can begin to use today to do your part to enhance employee engagement. These powerful tools are grounded in real-world application and have been used by thousands worldwide. The remarkable communication tools in this book will enable you to begin to enhance employee engagement within your sphere of influence, and your team and colleagues will reap the rewards.

Choose to be, as Tom Peters would say, an “island of excellence.”9

Regardless of what upper management does or does not do to promote employee engagement, regardless of how our fellow leaders choose to think and behave, and regardless of how our peers choose to function, each one of us can make a personal commitment to be an island of excellence even if we are floating in a sea of mediocrity.

Choose to do your part to create an engaged culture. Choose to be the type of leader your employees want to work with and for. Choose to engage in positive behaviors that convey respect. Imagine what your workplace or your team could be like if you choose to use engaging communication. Your team would be a happier, more collaborative, more innovative group. Do your part to make that a reality. And who knows? You just might engage others in your efforts and your island of excellence will grow.

Each tool in this book is a stand-alone technique you can put to work immediately. This means you can read through page by page or just jump in anywhere. Enjoy!

~ Pamela Jett