Improvising Business

by

Stevie Ray

 

September 16, 2013

 

Employee engagement. The newest, most elusive goal in American business. It seems every company takes an annual step back to survey their staff to find out who is "highly engaged" as opposed to "disconnected" from the company. If the scores skew in the wrong direction, someone from HR has to step in and see why Chad from accounting doesn't believe his spreadsheets have an impact on a company with over 300,000 employees and $11.6 billion in annual profits. There is usually a brief conversation about "how this company can't get along with the work you do," then Chad goes back to a cubicle that he once shared with a cube-mate who was let go the previous week, after being told the company couldn't get along without his work either. At the annual employee appreciation party the CEO shows a PowerPoint slide with an upward-slanting line graph, tells the crowd that they are the reason everything is going so well, and sits down for dinner at a table with a Reserved sign on it so none of those people can sit with him.

I am not saying that employee engagement is something that should be ignored, quite the contrary, employee engagement is the only thing that keeps a company profitable. In fact, in the very near future, Baby Boomers who decide that perhaps they might not want to work past the age of 78 will be leaving such a large hole in the workforce that employees will have so many employment options that they will choose not to remain in a workplace that leaves them less than engaged. The growing trend of people breaking up with romantic partners via a cell-phone text should be a warning that a disengaged employee can break off an engagement with a boss just as swiftly. We're all going to be fishing out of a very sparsely populated lake very soon.

I am also not against tracking employee engagement, I just find it laughable how so many companies attempt to rectify the problem. You can't spend 95% of your daily conversations with employees simply telling them what daily functions you want them to perform, and spend 5% telling them how their work matters. Yet that is precisely what 95% of managers do. You can't say, "I met with the company leaders and here is what they decided" and assume that will translate into the front line employees feeling connected to those leaders; especially if the company leaders are only visible on employee appreciation day. Even worse if the leader dresses in a suit that costs more than the cars the employees manufacture.

Engagement doesn't come from just satisfactorily performing your duties. It comes from feeling like you truly make a difference to another human being. You can't just tell someone they make a difference, they have to see it for themselves. Of course a manager needs to spend time talking about duties and responsibilities. How else would we know what needs to be done? However, a manager should spend a good chunk of time challenging us to think beyond duties and consider our impact on others. It cannot just be leaders who tell us we make a difference, that message must also come from fellow staff members. We often view leaders like our parents, they have to lie and tell us good things; otherwise we might give up and throw in the towel. Of course we were the best dancer in our dance recital, no parent would say, "You were almost as good as that other kid."

You have to create an avenue for employees to tell each other what kind of impact they have. And the messages must come from outside as well as within the department. We already know the impact we have on Cheryl in the next cubical; we need to hear from Antoine whose office is across the country. I have recently started asking staff members to challenge themselves by thinking of things they could do to remove stress from fellow employees whom they never encounter throughout their day. Someone from maintenance must ponder on what he or she could do to lighten the load of someone from the sales department and vice versa. Imagine how connected employees feel when they know that their work extends beyond the walls of their unit; that they can have a real impact on everyone with whom they decide to come in contact.

When I started challenging people to think outside their duties and to think about how they could lighten the load of others, I was not surprised by some reactions and quite surprised by others. I was not surprised when some employees said, "I have enough on my plate already. I don't have time to be thinking about all these people I don't even know." I was also not surprised when managers said, "I don't think my staff will take to this." Most suggestions that call for a change of thinking are resisted, especially suggestions that seem to result in more work. The truth is, these kinds of acts don't really require more work, just a shift of focus. What did surprise me was the reaction after the fact. Those that considered the needs of fellow staff members who they never met felt a greater sense of purpose in their work. They performed the same duties, but with a different feeling about the outcome.

Another great surprise was how fast the work day went for those who reached beyond their daily duties. The human brain is wired for interaction. We need to have a certain amount of human interaction throughout the day or we get wonky. The more human interaction we engage in, the faster our sense of time, and the quicker the day goes by. If we focus solely on tasks, we may look up and realize we didn't get everything done by quitting time, but that is not time flying by, it is the stress of never being able to catch up. Human interaction makes time fly. If you are thinking about the impact of your work on others, you will communicate more with others; which leads to a faster, happier workday. Sometimes the only way to find out how you might be able to lighten the load of someone from another department is to ask them for ideas.

There is a phenomenon in the human psyche called Reciprocation. When someone does something nice for us, we feel compelled to do something nice for them in return. This trait crosses all boundaries of culture, age, and gender (except neighbors who borrow lawn mowers). Research has discovered that often the person receiving the gift doesn't even have to personally know the giver in order to feel obligated to reciprocate. Our feeling of One good turn deserves another outweighs anonymity or unfamiliarity. And the size of the act has no bearing on the repayment. One study involved college students who were told to wait in a lobby by themselves before taking a test. A researcher was secretly stationed nearby, also "waiting to take a test." At one point, the researcher would leave the room and return with two cans of soft drinks. "The guy in charge said I could buy a can of soda from the machine while I waited," the plant would say. "I got you one, too." The test was to see how far the subject would go to repay the favor. Some subjects went so far as to give the plant a ride across town to work just to repay a can of soda. It turns out, we humans like to pay back bigger than we receive; doing so makes us feel better about ourselves.

One staff member trying to lighten the load of a staff member causes a ripple of reciprocation that has long lasting benefits throughout the company. People I have worked with who have shifted their focus from duties to impact, from inward to outward, experience a change in their work. They smile more, they enjoy their work more, and they feel connected to the entire organization rather than just their office-mates. The only way this can happen is if leaders make impact a part of the conversation, not just a speech at the end of the year. Make it a point to have staff members interact with those whom you might never expect. When Francine from IT discovers that Aaron from Fleet Services wants to make her job easier, both feel better.

Stevie Ray is a nationally recognized corporate speaker and trainer, helping companies improve communication skills, customer service, leadership, and team management.  He can be reached at www.stevierays.org or stevie@stevierays.org.

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