Engaging Your Staff for Better Business Management
As a leader, you have a moral responsibility to engage your team; as a manager you have a commercial imperative to do so, a fact that is attested to by the latest in a round of research going back more than a decade.
The Facts
Research on employees by Gallup over the last ten years provides some scary numbers, in that:
•Around one in every five workers is “engaged” which is to say that they are involved in and enthusiastic about their job.
•Three in every five workers are in the limbo of being “not engaged” and are unlikely to commit their full energy or resources to fulfilling their role to the best of their ability.
•Around one in every five workers are “actively disengaged”, which is to say that they are dissatisfied with, and disconnected from any responsibility towards, their jobs. In fact they go further, and are quite prepared to actively undo the work of more engaged co-workers whose performance they feel threatened by.
The Consequences
•Engaged workers are more productive by a significant margin than those not engaged or actively disengaged.
•Engaged staff are more focused on their role in producing outcomes that align with the company’s interests; actively disengaged staff focus on producing outcomes that serve their own interests, even when these are at the expense of the company’s interests.
•Engaged staff make less mistakes, are more efficient, stay with their employers longer, and set a positive example of engagement for others throughout the organization. Actively disengaged people make more mistakes, but often hide them or attribute them to others, set a negative example for others and do not stay as long. Paradoxically, some actively disengaged may stay in a role for long periods provided it continues to meet their needs.
•Engaged staff are more profitable for their company than disengaged or actively disengaged employees.
•Engaged employees have positive attitudes towards their jobs, most of their co-workers (they tend to indentify and disassociate from the actively disengaged), their employer, and the goods and services that they produce, often actively recommending the latter two to others. Actively disengaged employees are often vocal or militant in showing their negative attitude toward their work, their fellow workers and their employer, and often actively disparage their employer and its products and services to others.
•Engaged staff take an average of three sick days a year; actively disengaged average 6.5 sick days a year.
•Engaged employees report being more satisfied with their life and personal relationships; actively disengaged employees report being less satisfied with their personal lives (with half reporting more than three extremely negative encounters with family and friends in the month before the survey).
•Engaged staff tend to feel low levels of stress and high levels of security about their job; actively disengaged workers report high levels of stress and insecurity about their jobs.
•Engaged workers are generally satisfied with their managers or supervisors; more than half of actively disengaged workers would fire their boss if given the chance.
The Cure
It should be obvious that the cure for the malaise which Gallup is reporting – and which many of us witness as customers of other businesses, and hopefully, only occasionally (if at all) in our own businesses – lies with management.
It is one of management’s key roles and responsibilities to engage every team member with the company’s Vision – its “picture of perfection” – and to do whatever it takes on a day-to-day basis to keep them engaged. The alternative does not bear contemplation.
Workers responding to the Gallup survey provided some answers as to what they wanted from their managers, so it might be worth a moment or two to score your own performance (on a scale where 0 = lousy and 5 = brilliant) against these requests:
Action Required of Manager My Score
Focus me
Know me
Hear me
Help me feel proud
Help me review my contributions
Equip me
Help me grow
Help me see my importance
Help me build mutual trust
Challenge me
Score out of 60
So, how did you score?
Like some help? Here are some suggestions as to how to improve your score, from the survey respondents:
•Provide feedback and guidance
•Make real time to discuss problems
•Seek ideas and input from everyone
•Provide the resources to solve problems or to do a job well
•Give real recognition and/or reward
•Provide opportunities for people to develop their potential
•Be realistic when keeping the pressure on to perform and to achieve more with less
•Provide opportunities for social interaction
•Train people how to resolve interpersonal conflicts
•Promote joy and appropriate humour within the office
•Be flexible; help people to actively balance work and home responsibilities.
You could always score yourself on these too, but a braver move might be to share this article with your whole team, and open the entire field up for debate: Their feelings, your performance, and actions on both sides that would produce a better result than you presently have.
What might come of that?
Gallup Q12 survey
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
The Q12 questions are the copyright of Gallup, Inc 1993-1998.
Last Word
In the course of researching this article I came across a gem from John Wood of Gallup:
When it comes to the reactions of the Actively Disengaged to the changes that are essential to lift any business to the top of its game, Wood said, “We call them CAVE dwellers because they are Constantly Against Virtually Everything”!
