A key principle of employee engagement

In the past week nearly everywhere you turned you will have seen, read or heard tributes to Steve Jobs. What a testament to a remarkable life.

Amongst the many lessons that people claimed to have learned from him, one that resonated most with me was the idea that you need to "work on principle." I really like that idea. Why? Because we learn that to be a leader you have to be a visionary because it is your vision that inspires and creates the shared values on which great things are built. You will not get any argument from me on that. I would add, however, that in order to have a vision you have to have clear, sacrosanct principles.

Yet it is so much more profound than that. One definition of principle is an original source, and principle is the primary source for vision and the creation of values. Thus it is part of who you are. It is inviolate and integral to everything you do. This is what inspires. This is what attracts and what values are built on.

Think of your own experience for a moment. If you work without inspiration your work is a grind. Thus you can very reasonably say that work without principle is slavery – no matter how much you are paid.

So what principle drives you?

For me it is that people matter.  This is what has driven me for the past few years.

You could say that this is the principle of employee engagement. You see, there are so many different definitions of employee engagement that it is practically impossible to agree a standard definition. Thus the term itself becomes an umbrella. That is a problem because it is open to so many interpretations that success becomes a moving target. But "People matter!" is a concept that cuts through all that and as such is the principle that provides the uniting theme.

The power of principle is not in words. It is in ideas.  And of course it is personal. But for me it all boils down to the fact that no-one – not even a Steve Jobs – could achieve anything on their own. Taken to its logical extension that means organisational success is the result of aggregated personal success. Or, as I prefer to say – the more successful people an organisation has, the more successful it will be!

This has important implications for employee engagement.

If you distil employee engagement to a theme of "Getting people to offer more of their capability and potential willingly" as David McLeod and Nita Clarke do in their Employee Engagement Task Force report, then you can simplify it even further to say it is the same thing as personal fulfilment. In other words an engaged employee is a personally fulfilled person. This makes it imperative that you find a way to align personal capabilities and organisational needs. If you don't do this you will never have a truly lean organisation because you will always have wasted human potential.

However, it goes deeper even than that. It means that every one of your people has a value to your organisation. It is therefore important that you recognise that value and account for it. Only when you do this will you be able to partner with them effectively to optimise their potential and ensure that their lives are not unfulfilled and therefore wasted.  Enhance their value and their self-worth and you will create the win-win that makes life better for all.

That is why people matter. If you are serious about success, then it has to be a principle that you work on and that inspires you too.