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Employee Engagement: Work Should Be a Force For Good

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In April 2014, I personally defined employee engagement as: good work done well with others every day.

I wanted to make engagement both simple and good. I am delighted to see CIPD, the leading work organization in the UK spearhead a strong focus on good work. Here is a wonderful short video by Chief Executive Peter Cheese launching CIPD’s Manifesto for Work 2017, underlining the fundamental importance of good work:

Here is a snippet from this short video:

Work can and should be a force for good. It should be good for individuals, good for organizations, and therefore also good for economies and wider societies. Good work should be purposeful and meaningful. It should be inclusive and it should be fair.

David Zinger is a Canadian employee engagement speaker, educator, and consultant who works on engagement around the world.

 

Employee Engagement: A Dynamic Advance in Good Work

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Are you ready for the good stuff?

I have been defining employee engagement for a number of years as: good work done well with others every day.

I was thrilled to read the UK’s CIPD Manifesto for Work 2017. Here are the first few lines from the executive summary:

The UK faces a time of huge transition and transformation. We believe we must work towards putting people much more at the heart of business thinking and practice. It is people who drive creativity and innovation, productivity, customer service and all the elements of successful and sustainable enterprise of any kind. We need to invest in them, engage them, and lead from the principles that good work is purposeful, good work is safe, inclusive and good for our well-being, and that good work exists for the long-term benefit of individuals, organisations and society. That work can, and should, be a force for good, for all.

I put the “good stuff” in bold. Now that’s what I call good stuff!

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and educator. Picture by Peter W. Hart, my People Artists co-author.

Zinger’s 8 Word Behavioral Definition of Employee Engagement

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A shorter more simple definition of employee engagement

Employee Engagement Definition

It has taken me about 8 years and 10,000 hours to get to a definition of employee engagement that is both simple and elegant. I am discouraged with emotional and attitudinal surveys as I have become increasingly behavioral in my views of work and engagement. My definition puts engagement in the hands of each employee — I can choose to do this everyday while also being enabled and encouraged by my leaders, managers, and organization.

We are each responsible for our own engagement as we are accountable to each other for the impact we have on making engagement easy or difficult for others.

I define employee engagement in 8 words as:

Good work done well with others every day.

Good work means consistent quality and good is also a pathway to great while great is a by product of good. Good can be good enough. Good is sustainable while also being fused with gumption and grit rather than the hype and hyperbole of the continual and debilitating pursuit of great. Putting work in the definition means the focus of engagement is less about liking an organization or having a good attitude and more about our tasks, project, and specific work. Without work in the definition employee engagement is practically meaningless. Of course, sometimes our work extends beyond task and requires us to work on building robust relationships focused on achieving results.

Done well means we perform well and that good work can make us well.

With others acknowledges our connections and even a solo performer has inputs and interactions with other. We need to stop thinking that we work for someone or an organization, rather we work with someone or with an organization. We are joined and not subservient. We are all “social workers” these days.

Every day refers to enduring and sustainable work.  Engagement is not a biannual survey it is something we focus on every day, and we can change engagement for the better any and every day.

So let’s keep it simple and ensure employee engagement is good work done well with others every day.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and global expert who does his best to engage fully with work every day while helping others ensure employee engagement is not so much mumbo jumbo but an enriching experience of the time we spend working.