I appreciate your comments. You made me think about how engagement is both external and internal. External things such as relationships and rewards and praise, etc. can boost engagement and our own attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and actions can influence engagment.

I think what disturbs me is when management and staff are divided and staff feel that management is just trying to get more productivity out of them or management see disengagement as some kind of worker character flaw.

We are all in this together but sometimes we don’t feel a connection to our work, our peers, our leaders. This disconnect can lead to disengagement and disengagement can lead to disconnect…a sense of workplace dis-ease.

Now that I wrote this I realize I need to write a post in the near future on the “dis-ease” of work. Thanks once again for stimulating another viewpoint on engagement.

David

One things my manager did was to continuously give me feedback and when I’d do really well, he would make sure to give me a phonecall or a candybar. Even these words and small tokens really kept me engaged for that time and encouraged me in my work.

Of course indviduals with no corp support are usually band-aids =(, but it can help stop the bleeding until things change.