Have you noticed how employee engagement statistics rarely change? It does not seem to matter who conducts the research or whether it applies to the UK, the US, Europe or Australasia, you will learn either that only around 30% of your employees are engaged or that around 70% of your employees are disengaged. And in the decade or so that I have been monitoring these numbers they have not changed. What do you think that tells us?
Apart from indicating that employee engagement is a serious problem, this clearly says that employee engagement efforts do not seem to be working. When you factor in the increasing attention this subject is being given, this becomes a major concern. More and more employee engagement is a key issue for most organisations. So you have to ask yourself if your current approach is really working and – if not – why not.
As ever in such situations, you need to start by checking your premises. So, what is the premise of employee engagement? The answer is almost certain to be “to motivate employees so that they work more effectively and productively” or something along those lines. And that is where the problem lies.
Employee engagement is something you are doing, ostensibly for your employees but ultimately for the organisation’s benefit rather than theirs. So it is always going to be looked at with some misgiving by your people, especially if they do not trust management and there is a history of perceived exploitation. For them it is nothing more than another management initiative and ultimately management is all about getting people to do what you want them to do.
Leadership on the other hand is getting people to want what you want. And that is the essence of what employee engagement really is: getting people to want, and to work towards achieving, the same things you want. Thus you have to provide the leadership to inspire it. You will never engender employee engagement through management measures.
So how are you going to re-programme your employee engagement initiatives to bring about this transformation and ensure that they work well?
The obvious answer is through employee ownership. Make your employees co-owners of the business and enable them to do their job properly, with the autonomy and self-direction they yearn for, and you will reap the fruits of accountability and engagement you are looking for – without any costly and time-consuming employee engagement programmes. Employee ownership is the catalyst that provides the common purpose that will have your people wanting what you want. It eliminates the idea and practice of employees who need to be controlled, and thus incentivised to engage, and replaces employees with partners. This will compel more leadership on your part, but will simultaneously also embed the distributed leadership you need to transform your organisation and its results.