by Dave Mather  »  Here are some hard truths about employees and their relationship to their organizations. 

• 71% of employees today do not consider themselves actively engaged in their work 
  
• 43% of employees feel they are given the skills needed to fulfill their job responsibilities
  
• 70% of change initiatives fail usually due to people issues or an inability to lead
  
• 63% of Canadians that are “highly engaged” have no plans to leave their organization while 12% of the “disengaged” group are actively planning their exit strategy 
  

(study conducted by Towers Perin)

Underlying our interpretation of such data are mental models we accept as “truth” without scrutinizing the concepts on which they are built. 

Reread the above facts and you’ll see that there is a strong implication that somehow, this is all the employees’ fault. 

It may not be a stretch to hear an almost accusatory tone of “employees should be more engaged than they are.” 

This leads us towards solving the “problem” of employee engagement. 

We strongly suggest not to get bluffed out by these subtle implications. You have a business to run. Design your business to secure the results you desire and leave the “engagement problem” alone. Consider these questions:

Is it possible to have highly engaged employees and still miss projected goals?

Is it possible to have highly engaged employees and fail to delight customers? 

Is it possible to have highly engaged employees and have products that your target market no longer wants or needs? 

Is it possible to have highly engaged employees and lose customers to the competition? 

I rest my case. 

While employee engagement is desirable (as nebulous a concept as it is), it is a secondary goal that supports a business’s primary focus. Using engagement tools to produce a desired outcome is significantly different than setting “employee engagement” as the target.

Our business clients are tired of: 

• Academic theories that may work in large, bureaucratic organizations but are inappropriate for medium and small companies – the bulk of Canada’s employers
  
• Complicated processes that ironically, lock people up in an endless loop of “learning”
  
• Initiatives that start with a flurry of activity and enthusiasm but lose steam in the all-important implementation stage
  

Without guidelines, individuals tend to do things they think are important, but an executive’s responsibility is creating coordinated, focused efforts around the business strategy and guiding principles. We suggest supporting your strategic intent by providing measurable targets, describing behaviours required to produce those outcomes, and leading people to changing their attitudes through actions rather than demands, inspirational talks, theoretical discussions and/or vague implications.

Engagement tools include:

Listen not to understand, but to connect. Most people in our business culture default to listening to “learn” something in order to “understand” others. This is evident in conversations where people express their desire to “understand” each other. They mean no harm, and are expressing a genuine human desire to create meaningful relationships. This is a frustrating exercise since we cannot actually “understand” each other. For me to truly “understand” you, I’d need to become you. I can attempt to see things from your point of view, but I cannot really “understand” who you really are. I can, on the other hand, connect with you. I can empathize, listen, support, relate and become genuinely interested in what it’s like to be you. Once my goal is connecting, I shift from a purely mind-to-mind relationship towards a mind-to-heart relationship. 

Turn vague concepts into concrete outcomes. It’s surprising how often we hear goals stated as vague concepts (i.e. world-class customer service, best of breed, excellent service, exceed customer expectations, high quality, etc. etc.).  This is never more evident than in performance appraisals, 360° surveys, employer of choice and subjective rating scales. Sincere people strive to get an acceptable score from their manager, but both often lose sight of specific performance improvement objectives. Clarity of desired results, that is, turning them into pictures people can see in their mind’s eye, shifts a person’s relationship from subjective objective to subjective reality.

Suggestion: Project your vision beyond employee engagement and focus on business outcomes. Use engagement tools to produce tangible business outcomes using clear metrics to track your progress. Create an environment of performance improvement and profitable action by ensuring that each individual is connected to the business strategy and how your organization makes money.