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Employee Engagement: Don’t Contract Into False Labour

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A post Labour Day lament: Are you experiencing a labour of love?

Labour Day

Are you in labour? Have you been labouring under the wrong impression? We celebrated Labour Day in Canada and Labor Day in the United States on September 5th., the first Monday of September. This was a day to celebrate and honour working people. I appreciate the holiday but believe we should celebrate labour every day.

In Canada, as opposed to America, we spell labour with the “u” in it. It got me thinking about the “u” in labour.  Are you in labour? Do you personally engage fully with your work or are you stuck in false labour with the contractions of can’t and won’t?

On one hand, labour is defined as the process of childbirth while it also means to work hard and make great effort. Can you work hard and make strong effort to give birth to your own health and wellbeing experienced through work, not something done after work or outside of work?

I think many of us have a false notion of loving our work. We think it is an effusive emotion and hold onto an unrealistic ideal. At times work is tiring, gritty, and energy depleting but if those times become day after day not only is our work in trouble we are in jeopardy too. I love Erich Fromm’s writing in the Art of Loving. He defines love less as a passive emotion and more as the active manifestation of discipline, concentration, and patience. Do you bring these three lovely attributes to your work?

I encourage you during the year between this labour day and next labour day to take full responsibility for your own engagement. Engagement is not something done “to” you or “for” you it is primarily your connection to your work, the people you work with, and the organization. If you think the organization is responsible for your own engagement it turns you into a potential victim of the organization and work.

Engagement is yours. It can go with you into all the areas of your life. Now don’t get me wrong, there are influences on our engagement, we don’t live in some mythical workplace where everything is a ferry tale. And we don’t work in isolation. We are accountable for the influence we have on others engagement as they are accountable for the influences they have on our engagement.

Lets keep engagement simple – good work done well with others every day.  Labour day is not a once a year holiday it is how you work every day. Labour day is less about time off work and more about fully immersing yourself in the time you are working. Concentrate, be disciplined, be patient, be gritty, and there is a good chance you will be labouring in love.

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David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Winnipeg Canada who is focused on The New Employee Engagement, This year he has worked on engagement in: Turkey, Malaysia, Canada, United States, UK, Dubai, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia.

 

 

Employee Engagement: What I Learned from Why We Work

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Why We Work by Barry Schwartz

Suggested reading time = One minute and eleven seconds

Why We Work Barry Schwartz

Over the Christmas holidays I read Barry Schwartz’s book on Why We Work.  I have decided to tightly focus my next 4 years on teaching about work and employee engagement. Having taught Educational Psychology at the University of Manitoba for twenty-five years, I think a vital quality of a good teacher is to be a good learner. To this end, I am studying rather than just reading a variety of book and I am also taking a number of courses on Coursera. I believe a good teacher should always stay in touch with what it feels like to be a learner.

I have appreciated Barry’s writing since his book on The Paradox of Choice. His new book, Why We Work, is a pithy 90 page TEDBooks examining meaning and work. I appreciate how Schwartz debunked the role of pay and incentives as the only reason we work and how incentives can interfere with our why of work. He does a fine job of outlining Amy Wrzesniewski’s work on job, career, calling, and job crafting through the case of Luke, a hospital custodian. I liked the section about when we ask people what they do they don’t usually tell us their job description, they offer us a story.

I did not learn anything new from the book but I received a valuable reminder of the power of meaning, autonomy, choice, and engagement in making work meaningful.

Learning often entails relearning what we already knew but have lost sight of. Learning is often more about having good questions rather than ready made answers. So here is my question for you:

Why do you work?

David Zinger is an employee engagement educator, expert, and speaker.

Employee Engagement Survey: Black Hole or Portal?

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Does your survey shed new light on work and the organization?

Employee Engagement Black Hole

Employee engagement surveys are instruments to penetrate the blackness of our knowledge about our employees’ attitudes and perspectives about work. They should offer insight leading to action leading to increased employee engagement leading to real improvement in other key metrics we want for our organization and for our employees.  Yet often the results seem to get sucked into a black hole, employees are poorly informed about the survey results, and even employee comments made on the survey are kept secret. I encourage you during July and August to determine how you can ensure your survey is a portal to better engagement rather than a black hole that in the process of measuring engagement actually disengages employees.

David Zinger is an Employee Engagement Speaker/Expert from Winnipeg, Canada.

Employee Engagement Gratitude From David Zinger

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Thank you and all the best in employee engagement in 2015

Harry Wyatt Snow Falling

This is a picture taken from my office window yesterday.

It has been a pleasure to travel around the world in 2014 working on employee engagement and it is a a treasure to be home. I am so grateful for how much I learned about employee engagement this year from people in Singapore, Dubai, St. John’s Newfoundland, Washington DC, and so many other locations. I also learned so much from all of you who are talking about employee engagement online.

All the best as we move forwards and towards 2015.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

 

Are you with it? The Top 1 Post of Employee Engagement for 2014

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Stop the clutter of Top 10’s and find the focus of Top 1!

It is that time of year when so many sites are letting you know about their top 10 posts of 2014. In my mind, that is nine posts too many. We need more simplicity and less clutter of content marketing.

So, instead of 10 posts here is a link to my favorite post of 2014: Get with it: Are you ready for Employee Engagement 2015? It take under two minutes to read but can sustain your engagement efforts for all of 2015.

What are you waiting for? Get with it.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert striving do get simpler and use less to do more.