The Key Element to Achieving Employee Engagement
There was a time when nobody would have talked about a notion like employee engagement. In the business model that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, the employees were merely cogs that kept the employer's machine running. Some think that way still. In the 1800's the Trade Union movement emerged as a reaction against exploitation, and for more than a century remained the only real way that employees could be assured of some consideration of their individual rights and well-being in the face of often self-interested employers from the higher social strata.
But now we are seeing different dynamics emerge in the business world. People are better educated, and less tolerant of power distance and poor management. Social stratification is eroding and privilege is no longer seen as normality. The tide is shifting from the old hierarchical model where humble workers were grateful to have a job and didn't make waves to a reality in which employees are highly mobile, competition is extreme and business success and longevity can only be achieved with a loyal and motivated workforce. Recent events with the global COVID-19 pandemic have seen a massive shift to remote work - something that has only been possible for a comparatively short time thanks to advances in digital connectivity - and a large number of businesses have realised that they do not need to be maintaining expensive office space and forcing their employees to commute for often hours a day in order for the business to function.
It is now becoming the employer's pressing responsibility to assure that employees are engaged - the essential prerequisite for competitive productivity. Businesses that fail to achieve this will be quickly overtaken by those that pay attention to the central necessity of employee engagement.
WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?
Unfortunately, despite the shift in thinking towards such notions, it is early days, and employee engagement is still for the moment more honoured in the breach... The Gallup organisation, in their 2017 State of the Global Workplace report, indicate that
“just 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their job. Two-thirds are not engaged, and 18% are actively disengaged” (p.22)
While the Gallup figures are averaged across wildly different socioeconomic and labour market conditions, there clearly remains much work to be done.
The Gallup measurement is based on a survey which asks 12 questions, designed to establish whether employees are proud of their job and their performance, whether they feel as if their contribution is significant and appreciated, and whether they have opportunities for growth and professional development.
Significantly, of these 12 questions 9 make direct reference to the communicative environment of the workplace.
THE INDISPENSABLE VARIABLE... CONNECTION
Three of the Gallup questions ask about material resources, opportunity to use personal skills and opportunities for growth. These are individual measurements that do not directly imply communication.
All the remaining questions are asking about aspects of the employee's connection with the rest of their professional environment: alignment with company goals; understanding of specific expectations, tasks and deadlines; reception of personal feedback; feelings of recognition and encouragement; being heard; being part of a team; affective connection to colleagues and supervisors; sense of supported progression...
These considerations are not all "the same thing" by any means, but they do all have the common and central characteristic of being utterly dependant upon clear and effective in-house communication.
"COMMUNICATION" IS A 2-WAY STREET
And where many businesses fail is in misunderstanding the crucial aspect of real #HumanCommunication, and that is that it is 2-way. Sending e-mails, sticking up announcements and conducting autocratic meetings is not communicating in any useful sense: it is broadcasting.
Broadcasting, which was originally an agricultural word meaning "throwing seed widely", is necessary and useful for information dissemination in any professional context. Interestingly, "dissemination" was also originally an agricultural term with roughly the same meaning as "broadcasting". But it is not and should not be confused with communication, which is derived from Latin roots meaning "sharing things together".
As Dr. Veronica Hope-Hailey recently put it in an address to Corporate Research Forum’s conference in Vienna:
"Culture is co-creation – you can’t create it in a boardroom and cascade it down. It’s got to be a dialogue."
In our fast-paced, technologically "enhanced" world, we are creating tools that facilitate fragmentation and isolation. But we do not and cannot function in that way. We are a social species, and new technological toys cannot undo millions of years of psycho-social evolution. We derive our sense of self from our contact with others, and this is just as true professionally as it is socially and personally.
Human contact, and face-to-face communication are essential to feelings of identification, self-worth and well-being. As outdated class-derived licence to ignore the well-being of employees evaporates, so these human considerations become central to business success.
Structures must be put into place to assure that variables such as Gallup's 12 engagement criteria are not only understood but addressed in an effective manner.
And as the predominance of communication-oriented variables in the Gallup list amply demonstrates, this cannot be achieved without attention to the often poorly understood dynamics of real #HumanCommunication.