As the job market gets tighter for employers in the ongoing wake of The Great Resignation, the watch word to mitigate staff turnover is employee engagement. Employee engagement has been a hot topic in Human Resource (HR) circles for the last decade as research continually shows strong correlations between engaged employees and business results. This strong business case encouraged many companies and consultants to launch employee engagement initiatives, and thanks to this focus, engagement trends recently hit a ten-year high of 36% (which still isn’t that high).
This upward trajectory stalled abruptly last summer, in alignment with The Great Resignation, and employee engagement began declining for the first time in a decade. Between May and August 2021 the number of employed people looking for a new job nearly doubled, to 65%.
Why are the employee engagement gains made over the last decade so vulnerable to the dynamics of The Great Resignation?
Talking to clients at all organizational levels about what drives them away from their employers, I see a pattern I think reveals a dirty little secret in many of these employee engagement programs, which is that many have nothing to do with engagement at all. Often what passes for engagement is little more than “employee communications,” and employee communications is not the same as employee engagement.
The secret to employee engagement
The secret to employee engagement lies in the word “engagement”, which indicates two-way communication and interaction between employees and their managers. Yet, too many employment agreements (overt and otherwise) don’t foster actual engagement because they operate as though the employer-employee relationship is one-way. I call this more typical approach the disengagement model of one-way employee relations.
The dirty little secret hiding in many corporate investments in engaging employees–the thing that makes the outcomes in these programs so fragile–is that not enough managers (as the representative of the company) are skilled, incented or willing to do the work necessary to engage in a two-way exchange on work responsibilities, practices, compensation and culture.
And these are the primary issues employees care about.
The typical one-way “engagement” model follows a more industrial, cog-in-the-wheel, approach to human resources. The disengagement model finds the manager (on behalf of the company) telling the employee what to do and then providing feedback when they don’t do it right (this is often called a performance review.) When the employee has a contrary opinion, it usually falls on the deaf ears of company policy or uncaring management. In more extreme cases employee opinions become a complaint, with the burden of proof generally weighing down on the employee.
The employee is at a decided disadvantage in this kind of employer relationship and their primary leverage if they don’t want to, or can’t, fit into the round hole allocated to them, is to leave.
Not every employer is this employee-unfriendly, but a friendly employer is judged a “good egg” in comparison to the typical, disengaged employer. In this employee-friendly market, many companies are making the effort to accommodate workers’ square edges by developing more flexible work approaches, which is great, but I don’t know if these more enlightened policies will be enough to impact disengagement numbers at scale since employee issues are as individual and unique as the employees themselves. Company policies can only go so far to accommodate individual employee needs, and then they have to rely on the managers to help employees navigate the individual fit with the work that needs to be done.
Sadly, I believe managers are often the weak link in creating real, authentic, two-way dialog with employees. Most employees are lucky if their manager ever has a development conversation with them, inquiring about their own goals. And even fewer find supervisors willing to reconfigure work responsibilities to help achieve them. This reconfiguration and accommodation is the “two-way” aspect of engagement that too rarely takes place.
In fact, I’d suggest that to achieve true engagement employers, managers and employees would all do better to recognize that they are in constant negotiation with each other to balance the tension between what the employee wants and finds meaningful and what the organization needs and is willing to pay for. As a negotiation, both sides must recognize the right to request as well as the need to compromise. And neither side can become complacent as needs and wants change for both people and organizations.
For employee-manager engagement to become more successful, then, how can the parties become better negotiation partners?
How managers can engage employees
Generating an authentic, two-way supervisory relationship with employees is pretty straightforward, however, most managers miss the critical piece. They are more than willing to tell employees what they must do to change, but they are typically less willing to make accommodations and institute changes themselves that adapt the work, and team, for the employee’s benefit.
Many managers make the unfounded assumption that accommodating an employee request is setting an inappropriate example, or that it requires them to do whatever the employee requests. The beauty of a true negotiation is that both parties make accommodations and, in order to get more of what they want, they are both willing to give something up.
Managers also often miss the fact that the best solution won’t always be bilateral, between the manager and the employee, but may involve other team members. While it may be hard to create the flexibility to reconfigure one person’s job, within the boundaries of what others do, reconfiguring the teams responsibilities, and roles on the team more generally, opens up other opportunities to help everyone on the team find the right fit.
The keys to a real, manager-led employee engagement negotiation on roles and responsibilities that meet employee and employer needs include:
- Deep listening (reserving judgement to hear) to identify what all parties truly want and need
- Openness to accomplishing top priorities in new ways
- Flexibility and accommodation
- Relentless focus on aligning everyone’s vision of what success looks like
- Willingness to invest time and resources into helping employees develop and grow
- Agreement on accountability practices
- Regular review and adjustments
At the end of the day, the manager must recognize that both the people and the work are evolving, and that their role is to keep these changes in alignment as much as possible.
How employees can engage managers
What if you’re the employee and your boss isn’t this enlightened? For an employee, it can be quite daunting to initiate a process to renegotiate your job responsibilities and/or practices with your boss. But if you still find value in your work, and can see yourself succeeding in your organization, it’s good to make the effort before you give up and leave.
Here are a few keys to success:
- Go into the negotiation with a clear understanding of what you want and what’s important to you
- Have a willingness/backup plan to leave your role if you don’t get enough of what you want and need (though don’t threaten)
- Be open to new possibilities your employer comes up with you haven’t thought of
- Recognize that the employer needs you to produce meaningful results and be sure you understand what these are and deliver what you agree to
- Be willing to grow and develop your skills and approach
Pending contractual commitments to the contrary, you have every right to leave if you’re not happy and fulfilled, but you do need to respect the organization’s need to manage its resources (including you) against its priorities.
How companies can support them both
Companies that truly wish to foster employee engagement must review their policies with an eye towards whether it facilitates true two-way engagement.
- Review whether the policies give managers leeway to negotiate different kinds of work approaches with their employees.
- Evaluate whether tracked metrics relate to quality output and enable meaningful decision making
- Look at how the policies support managers in trying to accommodate employee needs while also keeping them accountable to mission-critical goals.
When the company policies, communications, metrics and incentives enable and facilitate two-way negotiations between managers and employers, the organization can stop spending so much energy talking about employee engagement, and focus more on accomplishing it.
