Dear Leader:

My name is David Zinger.

If I was in a self-help group, I might say my name is Dave Z. But we work together and in the workplace and you need to know who I am, what I look like, and how I am experiencing work.

When did our workplaces become so unsafe that you could not know my name or know my face? Have you started to believe that survey companies and consultancies are the higher power, that they know more about us than us, and they should own the data we created, housing it on a distant server rather than serving us as a stimulant to authentic and engaged conversations about work.

There is no right way to do a wrong thing and I think it is wrong to make people we work with anonymous. Do not disengage me with another anonymous employee engagement survey. If you are afraid to know who I am than shame on you and if I am afraid to tell you who I am and how I am experiencing work than we have a bigger issue than engagement, we have trust, safety, and relationship issues.

Don’t you realize that when I become anonymous I become more disengaged from the organization and the work, feeling like a cog in the wheel of the organization rather than a living, breathing unique person willing and able to create results that matter to both you and I.

If I work for you don’t survey me, talk with me. If we need to survey because we are so big and we want to see if there has been changes, then ensure that I become a part of creating the very survey questions you ask. If you want us all on the same page than give me an opportunity to also write on that page. Some people make their mark, others sign their name and I would like to believe my perceptions, thoughts, experiences, and evaluations are worthy of my signature not a tick on a survey box than starts to tick me off.

I want you to know who I am and you are entitled to know who I am as I work for you and with you and you pay me. If I am disengaged we need to talk, to learn, to create change and results that matter to all of us. Don’t reduce my input to a pixel on a pie chart or .0001 on a statistical analysis of engagement within our organization.

If you are the CEO, President, Vice-President, I hope you’ll let me see you, perhaps you could grab your laptop and mobile device and spend a half day a week sitting beside the security guard at the entrance to our building. Work is portable so you could do some of your work there and and wave to me, or maybe if I knew you sat there every Thursday morning, we could talk sports while having a few sips of coffee.

We will be better served by less programs and more personal interaction. Recognize that if you spend all your time in the top floors of our tall building I will feel much closer to the security guard than you. Don’t forget, you are an employee and need engaging interactions to keep you engaged too! By the way, if you sit by the security guard you may learn a lot more about the organization than if you stay sequestered on the top floors with the employee  experiences showing up on your screen as excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint. The real power point is our genuine and authentic point of connection so  sit by the stream of people flowing in and out of our building and get to know us as we get to know you.

Don’t fear me and don’t fear hearing from me. I am not naive or a Utopian idealist. I am a working person who wants to be recognized not with long service pins but with an opinion that matters, a voice that is heard and becomes part of the organizational conversation, and a face that is a part of our organizational community.

We can work together. We can be more engaged. We can create stronger and more robust results for the benefit of all.

I am ready.

Are you?

—–

David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2250 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers over 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Predictions for employee engagement during  the next decade.

20/20 Vision? What do you see as the future of employee engagement over the next 10 years? How will this concept and approach to work change during this decade? It would be nice to have 20/20 vision but the future is  murky at best. It is a risky thing to try and predict the future but I will suggest a few of the changes I believe will occur in the next 10 years. Of course,  I am biased and these are predictions I want to see occur. I encourage you to write your predictions in the comment section at the end of this post.

Sociometers and wockets will trump surveys. Surveys are  too anemic to measure and communicate  engagement. Long surveys or once a year surveys will become the dinosaurs of engagement measurement. Yes measurement is important and necessary but doing a survey once a year just does not cut it. We will see real time micro surveys based on portable technology, GPS systems, etc. To get a glimpse of the future of human real time measurement see sociometers and wockets.

Data will become more open and more linked. It will become important for data to become more transparent and open. I expect organizations will be less guarded, especially with their own employees. Employees should be the owners of the data they offer and be partners in assessing the results. To get a glimpse of the future of data (including employee engagement data) see Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web,  TED talk on the next WEB – linked data. By the way, I love how at this site you can click on the interactive transcript, scan the transcript, click on any phrase and the video will play from that point on!

Engagement will move beyond a fad.  I expect engagement will vastly mature beyond happy dances in workplaces and Christmas party feel good exercises to specific behavioral actions that are of benefit to employees, organizations, and customers. We must always ask ourselves — engagement in what? Engagement in work, relationships, customer service, results, organization, etc? I believe the cynics would say employee engagement is a fad that will go away within a couple more years. I believe employee engagement is here to stay but will go through criticism, revision, refinement, and  change over the next 10 years. We are seeing the word engagement attached to social media, student engagement, and many other phenomenon.

Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business Software will accelerate engagement. The use of social media within organizations and porous to external social media outside organizations will present new opportunities and challenges. The first task for many organizations will be to fully engage staff in this media and then to ensure these tools are used to enhance both engagement and results. Internal social media must be an engagement gain for the organization not an engagement drain.

Engagement will become more real and authentic. Employee engagement needs to be more robust, real, authentic, and honest. Trust is a must or employee engagement will be a bust. We have ways to assess authenticity and people’s social intelligence allows them to  see through phony in about an 18th of second.

Engagement will detach from a narrow focus on the role of employee. Employee engagement will need to detach the engagement part of employee engagement to more specific engagement. We will need to be more specific with such terms as work engagement, organizational engagement, community engagement, project engagement, , etc. Employee engagement is too narrowly attached to a role and can easily create an us/them experience in organizations with managers/leaders seeing themselves removed from employees. My preferred term would be work engagement but I am open to see how this changes.

We will witness stronger independent research on employee engagement. This is vital and important. Hopefully Dilbert will not have just one cartoon lampooning engagement but Scott Adams will run a series over a week or two. Academics and universities can make great contributions to the field with their objective, scientific, and independent research. Consulting companies have too much of a vested interest in specific results to place our faith in their research. We need more controlled studies with experimental groups. Although employee engagement is not a fad there has been too much hype making it seem like a magic management panacea — rather than a key vital tool and approach to work. As a side note I would love to see best companies or employers not identified by consulting companies with vested interests in selling services to the companies they identify.

The search for the single holy grail definition of employee engagement will be abandoned in favor of stronger behavioral and operational definitions of the term. Let’s drop the hope or search for one single definition of employee engagement. The MacLeod report found over 50 different definitions of engagement. Many writers seem to hunger for a common definition. I am not sure how important this is, and there are benefits to diverse definitions in the early years of this approach to work. I think we need more operational definitions of engagement so we know specifically how people are defining it rather than all of us defining it in the same way. For example, what is the specific score and questions that determines if an employee is placed in an engaged or disengaged category? We don’t all need to agree but we do need to understand fully how the term is being used. We still have not agreed on a common definition of love and love has been around a  lot longer than employee engagement.

Engagement will be woven into the fabric of management and tapestry of leadership. This decade will witness both a broadening and a deepening of engagement. Engagement will become the new term used for management or leadership. Engagement and conversation will not be leadership or management skills they will be leadership and management. Engagement is the logical successor to command and control. Henry Mintzberg made an excellent case for lessening our focus on leadership and suggested we should focus on “communityship.”

Engagement levels will increase. People are focusing on it, organizations are measuring it, managers are addressing it, unions are assessing it, individuals are enacting it. This is not so much a prediction as it is my full intention and application to play a vital role in the increase of employee engagement worldwide for the benefit of all: employee, organization, managers/leaders (who are also employees), customers, and all other stakeholders who have a role in work including the families of employees.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be, let’s see not only where we end up in 10 years — let’s fully engage in our work to make it happen.

—–

David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2100 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is also very involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor,  engagement approaches to Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

10 Principles of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is specific. We cannot sustain engagement all the time and everywhere. When we talk about engagement we need to ask: Who is engaged, with what,  for how long, and for what purpose?

Employee engagement is connection. Connection is the key.  When we disconnect we disengage. Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and happiness to leverage, sustain, and transform work into results

Employee engagement must create results that matter. This means results that are important to the employee, manager, leaders, organization, and customers. There is little point in having engaged employees if they are not contributing and creating significant results. Also, if the results only matter to the organization and not the employee – or the employee and not the organization – employee engagement will not sustain over time.

Employee engagement is always a human endeavor. Engagement is depersonalized when we refer to employees as human capital or human resources. I manage capital or resources, I work with people! Engagement will involved thinking, behavior, emotions, and relationships.

Employee engagement is fueled by energy. We must pay close attention to mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy at work. In addition we need to enhance organizational energy through meaningful connections and high quality interactions.

Employee engagement is more encompassing than motivation. Employee engagement embraces our emotions about work, how hard we work, how much we care about the organization, etc. It is a richer and more complex concept than  motivation and includes bidirectional engagement from managers, leaders, and organizational communities.

Employee are responsible for their own engagement, we are all accountable for everyone’s engagement. No one has a bigger role in engagement than the individual themselves – if engagement it to be it is up to me. We are accountable for other people’s engagement and we can influence their engagement – if engagement is to be it is up to we.

Employee engagement makes a difference. Employee engagement can improve organizational performance while also contributing to individual performance. Engagement is much more than an attitude, a feeling, or employee satisfaction.

Employee engagement is vital in recruitment, retention, and satisfaction. The majority of workers want to be engaged and look for work that will engage them. People will often leave organizations when they feel disengaged. It may even be worse for all if they remain when they are disengaged.

Employee engagement is here and now. Don’t wait for survey results or diagnosis from a management consultant. Look at the work you are doing right now and determine how you can engage with it more fully. Look at who you are working with and determine how you can help them to be more engaged.

—–

Principles created and revised by David Zinger

www.davidzinger.com /  dzinger@shaw.ca

January 26, 2010

What’s Up for 2011?

From leading thinkers to a  Zinger. I was inspired to write this based on the recent work by the Harvard Business Review asking leading thinkers what they planned to work on in 2011. I trust this will also inspire you to declare what you intend to work on in 2011 and feel free to write your intention in the comment section.

Snippets:

3 Word Theme. Last month I developed a 3 word theme for 2011: Engage – Educate – Enliven. This is my third year with a 3 word theme and I have found it most helpful to focus my work. My efforts in 2011 will be aligned with this theme.

Mobilizing the engagement community. I want to build, strengthen, and mobilize the employee engagement network as the source and resource to foster a 20% global increase in employee engagement by 2020.  This work will not be contained within the community but the community, as I see it, will be the springboard for inspiration, practices, monitoring, and applications. We have 10 years so I am patient in how we proceed while always ensuring we are moving forward.

Educate. I plan to design and build specific education resources on engagement. Leaders, managers, and all employees need skills, tools, tactics, and approaches to enhance their own engagement and to contribute to the engagement of the organization.  This work will consist of both online and e-book resources and in-person delivery of speeches and workshops. I plan to host fast and informative webinars with the leading engagement thinkers, to publish at least two books relating to employee engagement, and to create short educational e-books on education that will use a minimum of reader’s time to get the maximum result.

Hive talking. I plan to go back into honey bee hives this summer. Last year I placed office objects in the hive and this year I intend to run a pilot with a few networked computers that will be operational for a day, then transformed into a sculpture after that. I think there is much to be learned from this project to enhance communities and social networks focused on employee engagement.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

David Zinger creates buzz for employee engagement.  His writing, speaking, coaching, and consulting focus on helping organizations and individuals increase employee engagement by 20%. David founded the 3200 member Employee Engagement Network. The network  is committed to increasing employee engagement 20% by 2020. Contact David today to increase engagement where you work.

(Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  / Phone 204 254 2130  /  Website: www.davidzinger.com)

What’s Up?

The Harvard Business review just published a piece on what is on the 2011 agenda for some of the leading managment, leadership, and workplace thinkers. Click on the names below to read what such people as Dan Pink, Edgar H. Schein, and Bob Sutton are planning for 2011. I encourage you to watch the short 3 minute video introduction to the project outlined by Julia Kirby.

HBR Agenda 2011 Contributors

• Dan Ariely
• Tim Brown
• Peter Cappelli
• Thomas H. Davenport
• Esther Duflo
• Claudio Fernández-Aráoz
• Vijay Govindarajan
• Lynda Gratton
• J. Richard Hackman
• Herminia Ibarra
• Paul Kedrosky
• A. G. Lafley
• Charlene Li
• Jack Ma
• Jean-François Manzoni
• Daniel Pink
• Michael E. Porter
• Edgar H. Schein
• Eric Schmidt
• Klaus Schwab
• Clay Shirky
• Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Robert I. Sutton
• Laura D. Tyson

I encourage you to read the responses and determine what is on your 2011 work agenda. Tomorrow,  I will offer my agenda for 2011.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

David Zinger creates buzz for employee engagement.  His writing, speaking, coaching, and consulting focus on helping organizations and individuals increase employee engagement by 20%. David founded the 3200 member Employee Engagement Network. The network  is committed to increasing employee engagement 20% by 2020. Contact David today to increase engagement where you work.

(Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  / Phone 204 254 2130  /  Website: www.davidzinger.com)