Hello, today we are starting a new blog series on employee engagement. To get started, our first post in the series will begin by defining employee engagement — exactly what it is and why it is important for your organization.
You may have heard the term “employee engagement” floating around; it has become the human resources topic of the moment, but do you really know what it is? Employee engagement is more than gathering employees around for group team building sessions or office lunches. There are many misconceptions, so before we take a look at what employee engagement is, let’s first start with what it isn’t.
Happiness Does Not Equal Employee Engagement
Engaged employees are generally happy at work, but it does not go the other way to mean that happy employees are engaged employees. A happy employee may still be disengaged from the organization, they might outwardly appear to enjoy the benefits and perks of the organization and position, but they could be flatlining on engagement and working below their productivity ability.
Employee Engagement Is Not about “Them”
In many organizations managers and supervisors look at employee engagement as though there is an invisible, but highly potent line between “us” as managers and “them” as employees. Employee engagement affects the whole organization and management is not immune. Instead, managers need to lead as an example of engagement to the organization.
Engagement Is Not an Organization’s Strategy to Get More Work from Their Employees
True employee engagement cannot be forced with the wrong intentions. It shouldn’t be used as a method to get more work from employees — that can’t work anyway and won’t produce real long-term productivity increases.
In fact, employee engagement is nothing that can be faked or artificially created. It is the opposite. Engaged employees have a genuine emotional connection with the organization and a real commitment to the organization’s goals.
You can think of employee engagement in a similar way as you would of other relationships: you know, the relationships with your acquaintances, friends, spouse, or family. You know the people with whom you have that connection with and those that you don’t — the relationships that prosper the most are the ones where that emotional connection and where commitment exists. There are people for whom you would do almost anything, and then there are those that you merely tolerate out of necessity. The same goes for employees and the organization, you don’t want employees to just tolerate you, but be engaged with your organization and your goals.
A Textbook Definition of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is “the degree to which workers feel job satisfaction and an emotional connection to the success of their business, resulting in improved productivity, innovation and retention” (Richelle Taylor, Excellence In Motion, Inc.).
Another popular definition of what employee engagement means is: “Personal engagement is the simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s ‘preferred self’ in task behaviors that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical, cognitive, and emotional), and active, full role performances” (Denise M. Rousseau, Carnegie Mellon University).
True engagement must be an all out physical, cognitive, and emotional feeling. In other words, employees who love what they do, why they do it, and who they work for and with. An engaged employee is one who will work extra hours without being asked, take initiative without seeking reward or recognition, and simply go the extra mile because they feel it is their duty.
In their Leadership Insights series, Right Management accurately states, “An engaged workforce is achieved when a high number of employees have their hearts and minds aligned to both the job they do and the organization they work for.” Engaged employees display:
- Commitment to the job and organization
- Pride in the job and in the organization
- Willingness to advocate the benefits and advantages of the job and organization
- Satisfaction with the job and organization
Once you start looking at your organization through the lens of employee engagement, you can start to see the acutal level of employee engagement. Kevin Kruse, an author and serial entrepreneur, claims that the best test of engagement is discretionary effort. For example, it is the sales clerk who does not rush the client that comes in five minutes before closing time.
Kruse says that you can determine an employee’s engagement with simple questions such as: if there were a job opening here, would you recommend the opening to your friends and family? This is a subtle question that sheds a lot of light onto how much the employee values their organization. If an employee is willing to go that little bit further, if they want to sing the praises of their organization to their family and friends, it is a good indicator that they are really engaged. It’s like that old adage “Action speaks louder than words,” a centuries old saying that remains true today. True employee engagement lies right there in their actions.
