The 'Employee Engagement' Crisis Is Fake News (2/2)

Guest essay

This is part two of a two-part essay. Read part one:

The 'Employee Engagement' Crisis Is Fake News (1/2)

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Let’s throw the kitchen sink at Gallup

The human dimension - an alternative view looking at “engagement personas”

Last week I questioned the value of one-size-fits-all employee engagement surveys, particularly the reigning champion in that space, the Gallup Q12, because there’s no proven causal relationship between efforts to improve engagement scores and organizational performance.

This week I explore another crucial shortcoming: the extent to which Gallup comprehensively ignores and dismisses differences in employee motivations in seeking to boil employee engagement into a single almighty score and palm off those who don’t respond positively to Gallup’s survey questions as “disengaged.” 

The impact of these differences becomes rather obvious when looking at some recognizable personas one sees in the workplace.

Indeed, the motivations encompassed by each persona show that “disengagement” is a phony concept.

I’d argue that “disengagement” doesn’t exist as long as an individual is involved with or interested in the organization.

Instead, engagement is neither a virtue nor a vice, but merely a characterization of the nature and intensity of one’s relationship with an organization.

Given that characterization, six “engagement personas” emerge:

• Mary E. Ternity (The engagement of the “ring”)—mutual, heartfelt, enduring commitment

• Matt Grappler (The engagement of the “mat”)—wrestling: active disagreement, but within a productive context

• Smith N. Wesson (The engagement of the “rifle”)—battle: active opposition

• Lee Seamless (The engagement of the “gearshift”)—mechanical: productivity without resistance or grief

• Mercy Nairy (The engagement of the “hawk”)—reward seeking: focused on individual outcomes and recognition

• Van Gogh (The engagement of the “artist”)—perfection seeking: focused on fulfilling and developing personal standards

Mary E. Ternity: The engagement of the ring

Mary E. Ternity is the employee who has what many employers and employee engagement survey providers consider “the right kind of engagement.” 

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, I call this “the engagement of the ring”—a willingness to provide exceptional emotional commitment, supernormal productivity, and unbounded corporate enthusiasm manifesting itself in generous outbursts of “discretionary effort.”

The biggest question facing Mary’s employer is the extent to which it must reciprocate Mary’s commitment. 

It's also about the sacrifices and costs the employer must make if it wants all employees to mimic Mary’s commitment. Will the price be a culture that stifles dissent, innovation, and change? 

Moreover, if engagement is about “extraordinary mutual commitment” and there are actual senses of obligation on both sides, can such an organization withstand competition from companies whose approaches are honest but far more flexible?

Effectively achieving “engagement of the ring” needs to balance exceptional commitment sought from its managers and staff, with sustained and sustainable organizational commitment from leadership that withstands competitive and economic challenges. But are companies really willing to make that bargain?

Matt Grappler: The engagement of the mat

Matt Grappler is an engaged employee – but engaged differently than Mary. 

Matt often agitates, fights, or struggles with the organization, its culture, and its processes. 

In this way, he is a “wrestler,” fighting in a controlled way on the “mat.” In those fights and arguments, Matt stands up for what he sees as the organization’s interests, seeking innovation and improvements. 

At a broader level, disagreements within organizations can bring friction, discord, and disruption, things many organizations seek to avoid.

The willingness of a “Matt Grappler” to initiate those fights and disruptions is not a form of “disengagement,” but rather a keen form of engagement that can be valuable to an ambitious and competitive organization if acknowledged and harnessed appropriately. But you wouldn’t know that from Matt’s engagement score.

Bea Seamless: The engagement of the gearshift

For many people, work is about going to the plant or the office, doing everything across the desk, and going home and getting on with the rest of their lives—taking care of the kids, or the boat for that matter.  

Bea Seamless is that kind of employee. 

The engagement survey might consider Lee “disengaged.” 

But Bea’s way of working is a mechanical type of engagement—coming into the process, doing her bit, and leaving work matters at the door at the end of the day.

This kind of engagement and the organizations that foster it are heavily criticized by those who see “engagement” as a moral imperative. 

But for Bea, it works. 

And for Bea’s employer and others like it, the “engagement of the gearshift” endures because there are many employees who do not want jobs or positions that interfere with their non-work lives: They want to go to work, do their jobs, go home and devote their mental energy to their children, churches, activities or communities.

This is not to say that the “engagement of the gearshift” must be purely one-way and transactional. Effective engagement within such organizations can be built out of an honest understanding of organizational, employee, and manager ambitions, and by identifying opportunities where participation can strengthen the organization’s commercial offerings or production processes.

Mercy Nairy and Van Gogh - the engagement of the hawk or the artist

Mercy Nairy and Van Gogh are two different personas with one common characteristic: a highly self-oriented sense of what they want to get out of their respective organizations. 

Mercy practices the “engagement of the hawk” by focusing on personal triumph and financial reward. 

Van is driven by the “engagement of the artist” – a desire to pursue the perfection of his chosen craft.

In a world where the contractor and embedded consultant play an increasingly important internal role in organizations, the sentiments of people belonging to either species tend to be highly individualized, thus challenging an overall engagement framework that tends to exalt long-term mutual harmony. 

Smith N. Wesson: The engagement of the rifle

Current models of “engagement” tend to consider active hostility, opposition, or sabotage characteristic of “disengaged” employees (or for that matter, “disengaged” managers or corporate alumni).

But, while disgruntled, people like Smith N. Wesson are profoundly engaged. 

They care about the organization and are determined to pay it back for any real or imagined offenses. This is the engagement of the rifle—an active but destructive form of engagement.

The “engagement” of Smith and those like him can undermine the enthusiasm of fellow staff members. 

They can make claims about product and service quality within their social networks. In company towns they can spread rumors that can undermine the stability of the company/community relationship. 

What’s important about looking at the “engagement of the rifle” is not simply that people so engaged are aggressive and hostile. Instead, they demonstrate a level and intensity of engagement that can be channeled and harnessed in a more appropriate direction.

For many organizations, finding a way to identify, address, and channel “rifle engagement” more productively—creating closure and reconciliation—could be the kind of engagement effort they need most.

In closing

I admit that I’ve thrown the kitchen sink at Gallup and the idea that “employee engagement” is a one-size-fits-all, zero-to-100 concept. But when an idea like “higher engagement scores lead to higher profitability” becomes so ingrained despite the flimsy logic behind it—and demands such a massive amount of resources, time, and energy be applied to fulfilling it, the sacrifice of a sink is a price worth paying.

Indeed, the only “employee engagement crisis” is one of Gallup’s making.

It’s particularly curious that despite all of the efforts to combat it over the last 20-plus years, there has been no evidence either of sustained improvement or any causal relationship between efforts to improve scores and actual performance improvements. 

Indeed, if there is an actual crisis, a crucial factor is insisting organizations treat diversely motivated employees as an undifferentiated mass, leading to a continuing struggle to get them to norm toward a common number. Perhaps it is more of a crisis of sanity than a crisis of engagement.