On Employee Engagement
Losing a job is something that can happen to everyone. It is the landmark of a rapidly changing business world. If there is any certainty in the relationship between an employee and his/her employer is its inherent volatility, and the reason for this are numerous. As with any relationship this leads most probably to rupture and for whatever reason. It is very much clear that this volatility is affected but the rate of change in today’s world, but the striking thing is that the conventional management practice continues to ignore such a basic fact, that things change and most of the time not in a positive way.
The theory of employee engagement taught in business schools says that engaged employees lead to a successful business. Some say that this success rate can go up to 100% compared to companies with low-engagement employees. This engagement is a combination of commitment and alignment. Commitment to stay can come in different forms. You can commit to staying because you don’t have a choice or because you feel an emotional attachment. Alignment however is directly related to the organisation’s interest.
I used to believe that for some time, but my experience and research led me to an opposing and interesting direction. As with many things in social sciences, the theory of employee engagement is very static. It assumes that things are kept stable whether in-person or from an organisation standpoint. The fact of the matter is that personal commitment can change because a person evolves or changes his priorities, and no system can foresee that. Also, due to internal decisions or external forces, the alignment can also change, and we’ve seen that a lot when companies introduce small- or large-scale changes.
The story about successful companies having a high rate of employee engagement is just a mere correlation and not causation. I would even go one step further and say it is the other way around. It is because a company is successful that it has a high degree of engagement. I haven’t seen any struggling company that is fighting for its survival implement a large-scale engagement program to turn things around. When you are already successful, you want to attract the right people, make sure they stay, pay them well, and put in place a program to increase their overall engagement. This reminds me of a company I visited some time ago whose manager presented a thorough culture program to increase employee satisfaction. I later figured out that the company didn’t have a single competitor.
Can a commercial organisation function and even succeed without a high level of engagement? I say, yes, just look throughout history. I don’t think the miner in the middle of the 19th century was highly engaged when working for a successful coal mining corporation.
So, why are management practitioners obsessed with engagement? Here’s my theory:
When you look at social organisations that achieved the highest level of engagement, religions and other religion-like institutions come first to mind. That says a lot and it comes as no surprise if you look at the history of humankind. The interesting thing is that in the post-enlightenment world where western philosophers and scientists liberated (or at least tried to liberate) human affairs from the sacred grip, the subsequent management theorists developed doctrine-like principles to try and fuel employee engagement. In other words, an employee should embrace the company values, mission, etc. so he can perform very well. This sense of belonging to a social institution is not very different from religion. In fact, the father of capitalism, Adam Smith, was a professor of moral philosophy, itself a branch of religion. Other forms of doctrines have mushroomed and have taken different forms. It is as if the human mind can’t live without some doctrines to help them navigate a world they don’t understand, but that’s another story.
Within corporations, engagement programs have their own prophets (Chief Engagement Officers), symbols, and rituals. It is part of the whole thinking about how companies should function, it’s managerialism. It is, I think, a subsequent feature of the free-market doctrine that swayed the world during the last two hundred years. The paradox though, and that’s the interesting thing, is that the application of the free market and its laissez-faire mantra to the corporate world does not support the idea of employee engagement at all. The hire-fire practice used throughout Anglo-Saxon countries makes you wonder about the ultimate purpose of employee engagement. Why would an employee be engaged knowing that things can change for him and for the company quite abruptly? This is not a good strategy at all. One wonders why employee anxiety has been increasing in the modern world.
For a long time, companies that have displayed a high level of engagement were those belonging to the tech industry which witnessed an overflow of cheap money during the last decade. Countless articles were written about culture and engagement among employees. The latest wave of lay-offs in the same industry is difficult to swallow especially for highly engaged employees. This is a complete breakdown in trust between employees and their companies, and this has not been factored into the employee engagement theory.
The other thing, capitalism made employment an important indicator for the health of an economy. A paid employee gets a salary, spends it, and keeps the whole economy rolling. So, everyone’s happy, or are they? So, where does employee engagement fit into this macro reality? Nowhere. At the macro level, capitalism does not care about employee engagement as long as there is employment. So why make a big deal with employee engagement at the company level? Are we using the importance of the sense of belonging to a social institution for the company's benefit? And even if the intent is good, the crisis of meaning that has been swaying societies mostly in western world but not only, since “we killed God” to paraphrase Nitsche is much more profound. It’s he who said, “what sacred games shall we have to invent?”. Are organisations prepared for the big challenge or is it really their role to address it. Some form of group belonging is always a good thing as it is part of our social condition, but the task is gargantuan and companies, following blindly a lame theory, are in a complete ignorance.
While I see that full engagement is necessary for any entrepreneurial activities and other activities where one truly have skin in the game through some employee ownership, among others, at the average employee level though, it makes him fragile to external variations and changes, which is exactly what’s happening nowadays. It increases an employee’s exposure to anxiety and mental health issues. I think organisations, unknowingly are contributing to this. Things always have untended consequence despite the initial intent.
Organisations have a role in the economy and society which is to organise a set of activities and people to commercially create value within transactional relationships. While doing so, one might find some level of sense of belonging, but I don’t think the role of organisations is to develop the new ‘sacred’ construct for its employees.
Within this transactional framework and recognising the constant change that it is subject to, organisations should develop a substrate to allow employees to evolve on their own terms exploring all possibles routes towards evolutionary diversity while delivering as per transactionally requested. They need to accompany this evolution, nurture it because everyone will win and if it leads to ‘high engagement’ so be it but it’s the consequence not the input. Some employees might find it important to belong in order to go beyond their transactional relationship, but they should never expect anything in return because expectations especially when there are linked to others have negative effects. In other words, you are engaged because this is who you really are. At the other end of the spectrum, there is nothing wrong with transactional jobs if it suits you. Put another way, you can do the job you are expected to do, nothing more and nothing less. Choosing one or another is something very personal, but one should not exclude that change happens and that the certainty of any relationship is uncertainty. Ignore that at your grand peril.
