Employee Engagement My Ass
This article is based on the transcript from the Cafe Grit Podcast, S1E14.
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We should probably start off with “What is Employee Engagement?”
The concept of EE has been around since the 90s. One of the most concise definitions I have found comes from Forbes:
“Definition: Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.
This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don't work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization's goals.”
I like this. Employee Engagement is more complex than this, methinks. But as a general definition, it works. I like to think of EE as how much an employee perceives themselves to be a part of the success (I am the success), rather than just a means to it for someone else (I’m just a useful mechanism for the company to succeed).
Why do we care about Employee Engagement?
QuantumWorkplace.com has a great list of areas impacted by EE.
“Why does employee engagement matter?
Employee engagement affects just about every important element of an organization. Employees who are connected to their organization work harder, stay longer, and impact employee and business outcomes including:
Increased productivity
Increased profitability and revenue
Better customer service
Lower employee turnover
Better recruitment and talent acquisition
Greater brand presence and reputation
Increased market share and stock price
Increased workplace safety”
Don’t take their word for it. Gallup recently did a Meta-Analysis of The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes that backed up many of these points with research.
Now that we’ve got the clinical definitions taken care of, let me tell you a little story.
In 2006 I was working at a utility company in Michigan. I had been there for six years in the technology department. I started off as a programmer and worked my way up as a technical lead on larger and larger projects. I loved project work. 👩🏻💻
One day we started hearing about a really big project that was starting up. This mother was huge. The goal was to replace dozens and dozens of our legacy applications and systems (many of them home-grown over decades) with one new ginormous enterprise solution. It would be our HR, our Finance and Accounting, our Work and Asset Management, our Procurement, etc.
This was a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project and would no doubt be hell on earth.
And I wanted to be a part of it more than anything. 🙏
I was the true definition of an Engaged Employee.
I shamelessly threw myself at the planners of this project. Someone put up a list outside a manager’s cubicle of people who wanted to be on this project. It was meant as a joke, but I squeezed my name up at the top because I wanted in. Badly.
I ended up being on this project for 2 ½ years and it was pure Hell.
I am not even kidding you. I worked 12-hour weekdays for nearly the entire time. I would put in a 10-hour day, go home, bawl uncontrollably from the stress, then open up my laptop and spend another 2-3 hours catching up before I went to bed.
In the last 6 months of the project, I spent almost every weekend (both days) at our corporate headquarters doing performance and stress testing. On top of the long weekdays.
🐕 I was sending my poor puppy to daycare 3-4 days a week purely out of guilt because I wasn’t spending enough time with her. Eventually, I just got a second dog to keep her company.
Midway into the project, I started having headaches. I went through three rounds of antibiotics thinking I had a sinus infection until finally, after a series of specialist visits, I self-diagnosed that I was clenching my teeth, which my dentist confirmed. To this day I wear a bite splint at night. 🦷
I fought with many of my coworkers. There were a few times we nearly came to blows. I wanted to choke a half-dozen of the consultants who were running the project.
There were many heated moments, stress was astronomical, and those 2 ½ years of constantly elevated cortisol probably caused more long-term physical damage to my biology than all the years before or since.
💓 And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
Why? Because I was an engaged employee.
No one ever asked me explicitly to work long hours. No one forced me or pressured me to come in on weekends.
I wanted to do it. I needed to do it.
Why would I go back and go through this literal Hell again?
I felt like we were on a mission together. No matter how bad it got, we were all pulling for the same thing.
The managers, the executives, they were all there in the trenches with us.
I felt valued. My contribution did not go unnoticed even among hundreds of other employees and contractors.
I built great relationships.
I felt like I was a PART of the success of the project, not just a means to it. Which is exactly what many people feel nowadays. They might help with the success, but it’s not theirs. It belongs to someone else. The company, the shareholders, some executives they’ve never met.
At the tail end of this project, the 2008 crash occurred. My husband’s company shut down and he was looking for opportunities. He asked me if he should open the door to other areas – further away in the state or even out of state.
☝🏽 At that time, I told him no fucking way. I wasn’t going anywhere. I loved the company, I loved the people, and I willingly and enthusiastically went “the extra mile” to the detriment of my own physical and mental health because I was an engaged employee.
Three years later, that changed.
We had a new executive team, a major reorg, and were outsourcing our day-to-day operations. I wrote about these events in “Where The Hell Is My Bacon?” 📚 🥓
It was stressful in a very different way than the big project I just talked about. This was a bad Hell.
🤬 I saw my coworkers fearing for their jobs
🤬 We pleaded with management to rethink their timeline for transitioning decades of work to an offshore team
🤬 I realized, for the first time in 11 years, that I was no longer able to affect change in the organization
🤬 My coworkers and I had to resort to using bacon to get our voices heard
This was the time when I started thinking that maybe I should look at other opportunities.
I didn’t leave then, when it was bad. It took me five years. But the seed had been planted. The door opened.
Once the door is opened, it’s very easy to peek outside.
Step through the threshold. Smell a different air.
I no longer felt like an engaged employee. I wasn’t enthusiastic about my work and I began to resent “going the extra mile” rather than just doing it without even thinking about it.
During the year when we were actively transitioning to the outsourced team, I did not have a positive attitude toward the company and its values.
I stopped wanting to defend the company when people talked badly about it. And they did. It’s a utility company, they’re everybody’s asshole. Even if they donate a bazillion dollars to a worthy charity, people will still think utility companies are the shit of the earth. 💩
When I was on the big project (the one I talked about earlier), I felt like we had a common goal, a common mission. Now I felt wholly unsupportive of the direction.
Don’t get me wrong. I still rocked it. As did most of my teammates. They have a strong work ethic and most amazing sense of ownership.
But again…when you are shown the door, sometimes you go through it. A lot of people did during that time. I did too, it just took a few years.
⭐️ So this is the lesson for corporations, I guess. Don’t show people the door unless you are willing to deal with the ramifications of them walking through it.
So what do we do about it?
Everyone wants to know how to improve Employee Engagement. That seems like a hard question to answer because it is different for everyone.
But a good place to start is to ask them. Ask your employees what isn’t working. What can YOU do for THEM (rather than the other way around, which is what always seems to be the case).
👉🏻 if you treat your employees well (and I’m not talking JUST a paycheck)
👉🏽if you challenge them in good ways
👉🏾 if you listen to them and use their ideas
👉🏿 if you champion for them and have their back
👉🏾 if you give them training and process help and support
👉🏽 if you give them flexibility when they need it and even when they don’t
👉🏼 if you care…truly care…about them and their lives at work and at home
👉🏻 if you treat them as your most valuable resource and not just a number
👉🏽 if you make them a PART of your success and not just a means to it
You will likely have engaged employees who want you…and them…and the company to succeed.
And they will do what needs to be done to make that happen.
And here’s the gravy: None of that stuff is hard. Most of the time it just means putting your ego and greed aside and working on empathy and emotional intelligence.
So. Do it.
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Thank you once again for stopping by Café Grit, where the moxie is fresh, the passion cold-brewed, and everything is served with a heaping side of mojo.
Take it easy…
