How to Get Engagement * You Can’t

That’s right. You can’t “get” engagement from employees. They can’t “give” you engagement, either. That’s because “engagement” isn’t a thing to be had. It’s a state of being that you can only foster. Or, as Dov Seidman recently put it in a terrific post in Bloomberg Businessweek:

“The majority of engagement-improvement initiatives continue to treat employee engagement as an end goal. Employee engagement is a condition – manifested by the inspiration an employee unleashes in his or her work when he or she is deeply connected to a mission, purpose, and the values that connect us. …

“We cannot "motivate" engagement (or innovation, growth, or succession for that matter); instead, we must inspire the kind of outcomes we want by rooting ourselves in a set of values, being in the grip of an idea worthy of dedication and commitment, connecting around a meaningful and shared purpose, and aligning around a common, deep, and sustainable set of human, societal, and environmental values.”

I couldn’t agree more. The challenge for HR pros and company leaders is building the construct in which engagement is possible – establishing meaningful values, launching an inspiring idea, creating a shared purpose. And that’s certainly not easy in the workplace. But it is possible.

How do I know? Because I’ve seen several great companies achieve just that. But it’s not something you can impose from above. You can outline the values, but if you (meaning all employees, at every level) aren’t willing to live those values, praise those values when demonstrated by others, and call people out for violating those values with real consequences, then your values are meaningless.

If the idea (mission, goal, strategic objective) is engaging for you alone, and not something that everyone in the organization is excited to contribute to – because they know their work IS contributing to that idea – then you’ve failed at launching a mission everyone can get behind.

If you want to “increase your engagement scores,” I can’t help you. But if you want to help your employees engage with you in your mission, your strategic objectives, your company values, then you need to create culture in which employees want to engage. And that I can help you with – by creating a culture of appreciation.

GenY: So “Different” They’re the Same

I’m overwhelmed by the generalities about Generation Y in the HR-related press and blogs. They’re entitled. They expect to start at the top. They need a gold star every two minutes to know they’re doing good work.

What do I see in GenY? A group of young employees who want the same things from work and behave in very much the way I did when I was their age. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll likely admit the same. Sure they want to be at the top. That’s where the action is. They know they have to work hard to get there, though. But if you’re not giving them the “gold stars” – meaningful feedback on their work and praise when they do it well – how will they know they’re doing the right thing? But their drive does create one big challenge for business today – creating opportunities for them to grow into greater responsibility and contribution quickly, and remaining true to the company values at the same time.

That’s right – company values are very important to GenY. In fact, recent BlessingWhite research showed the top 5 characteristics recent grads want from their employers (quoting):

1. Company values, mission and culture
2. Recreation (gym facilities, non-work related outings, etc.)
3. Non-financial benefits (medical/dental/vision, paid time off, etc.)
4. Social interaction/work-life blending
5. Financial benefits and salary

Before all else, company values, mission and culture are what’s important to GenY. They want to make a difference, and they want to work in a company that they think is making a difference, too.

But notice where compensation falls – dead last. So what are you doing to make “living the values” something every employee instinctively does? How do you take your values off the wall and bring them to life? How do you show employees that the values are being lived and breathed in daily work? The best way is with behavior-based employee recognition the specifically acknowledges and appreciates employees who demonstrate those values in their work – and does so frequently and in the moment. And, critically, shares these successes in a way that others can chime in with their agreement as well.

Rank and File * Not a Motivational Tool

A practical question for you: “What should employers do to make their employees work harder when financial incentives [aren’t effective] anymore?”

What do you think? Let’s take a best case scenario – all of your employees are paid properly, fairly and well for their level of work, experience, contribution and cost of living needs. You’ve seen the negative fall-out from financial incentives (cash bonuses) and are looking for other methods of motivation. What are the options you would legitimately consider? Behavior-based employee recognition? Efforts to change the company culture to create a workplace employees want to engage in? Something as simple as a team lunch?

Would you consider implementing stacked ranking – as a method of motivation, I mean? A management professor at Wharton considered this, “… looking at rank as its own reward. I wanted to find out whether workers truly want to know how they rank against their peers and … if they knew how they ranked, did it cause them to adjust their effort?”

Paul Hebert over at i2i raised some interesting issues with the research and how it was constructed, not least of which the pool of workers used (recruited from Mechanical Turk, meaning they work individually on self-selected projects with no known relation to each other).

As for me, I just don’t see how the professors findings could be put to practical use.

“A good employer knows its employees very well and should have a good idea how they will respond to the prospect of being ranked. The key is to devote more time to thinking about whether to give feedback, and how each individual will respond to it. If, as the employer, you think a worker will respond positively to a ranking and feel inspired to work harder, then by all means do it. But it’s imperative to think about it on an individual level.”

On the surface, that sounds good. I couldn’t agree more that employers/managers should know their teams well and should give them feedback in the way they prefer. But… How do you implement a ranking system in which some employees participate and some don’t? It’s like being only a little pregnant.

Every employee should be ranked against him or herself. Full stop. Did they grow, learn and improve? And yes, you must give them feedback, positive and negative. Research shows the worst thing you can do is give no feedback at all.

GloboBlog Moves!

Welcome to our new blog home!

We are moving our blog this week to have our blog on strategic employee recognition co-located with our company website. While the focus of the blog will not change – I’ll keep bringing you the latest news and research in the employee recognition, incentives, and performance and talent management industry – this relocation also brings you a much better search capability to find the topics and research you care about most.

If you’re not already, be sure to subscribe today! Links for email and RSS subscription options are available in the left column. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook or through our group on LinkedIn.

As always, I look forward to continuing the conversation with you as we work to improve the employee recognition experience!

You can also follow me at Compensation Café, a strong group of HR pros from around the world writing on all things, compensation and recognition.

If you missed it, be sure to catch up on my latest post: Combat Fear with Appreciation * 9 Signs You Work in an Appreciative Workplace.