What we can learn about employee engagement while sailing on a cruise boat in the Caribbean.
Click on this line to read my latest post about employee engagement surveys on LinkedIN.
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.
Employee Engagement: Give me an inch
Dan Cook on the Employee Benefits Network wrote a piece: Employee engagement inching higher.
Reading time = 49 seconds
I’ll take an inch of progress in this field any day. But Dan goes on to talk about the Tempkin Group study with this statement:
engagement remains a science in its infancy. Even employers that measure engagement often don’t see acting on the results as an imperative.
I don’t mind scientific infancy in engagement but I think it is disheartening and disengaging to have employers measure engagement but fail to act on the result. This is what causes iatrogenic disengagement. Our efforts in working on engagement may inadvertently be causing a decrease in engagement. Employees were asked about their engagement, nothing is done, so obviously it is not very important. Engage is a hearty verb signifying action and connection not disconnection and disinterest.
Engage along with me, the best is yet to be!
David Zinger is an employee engagement expert and speaker who encourage an action approach to engagement based on power and simple rules derived from the pyramid of employee engagement.
Employee Engagement: The Free Iatrogenic Disengagement E-Book
Employee Engagement: Let’s guard against creating disengagement in our efforts to improve employee engagement.
(Reading & Viewing Time = 2 minutes and 41 seconds)
Iatrogenic disengagement is the disengagement caused by trying to measure or increase engagement. It is often unintentional and frequently goes unnoticed. I am offering you two resources to help stop iatrogenic disengagement where you work. The first is a one minute video on the topic. The other resources if a slide presentation that can also be downloaded as an e-book. Use these resourses to increase awareness and stimulate conversation about iatrogenic disengagement where you work.
A video introduction:
Iatrogenic Disengagement from David Zinger on Vimeo.
The slides (e-book) resource.
If you prefer a PDF e-book version, click on this title or the image of the cover at the start of this article: Iatrogenic Disengagement e-book
David Zinger is a global employee engagement speaker and expert.
Get with it: Are you ready for Employee Engagement 2015?
Get with it for more robust employee engagement
Reading time: 1 minutes and 51 seconds
I frequently see three different approaches to employee engagement. In the first approach employee engagement it something the organization does to employees. In the second approach employee engagement is something done for employees. In the third approach employee engagement is something done with employees.
Here is a brief outline of each approach.
TO: In this approach employees often experience the organization’s approach as something being done to them to get them to work harder and longer. Levers are pulled and drivers are pushed to get more discretionary effort. Organizations go in search of the secrets of engagement or hope to plug another organization’s best case into their operations without having to do anything else. This is a mechanical approach and engagement is a method used to get more productivity with a failure to ensure engagement is a benefit to all. Senior leadership and even many managers may fail to fully acknowledge that they are also employees. This approach may cause iatrogenic disengagement when employees are cynical of the organization’s motives and sometimes see the statement “employees are our greatest resource” paired with a lack to transparency and a lack of ethical integrity.
FOR: This approach is paternalistic in nature. The organization will look after employees. Brady Wilson from Juice Inc. has done some excellent work differentiating parenting from partnering in the workplace. This approach often fails to involve employees in their own engagement, engagement data is not readily shared with everyone and sometimes the organizations seems at a loss when employees did not get on the bus failing to realize that many employees want to drive themselves or they may even prefer to walk. Employees are asked in surveys about their opinions and attitudes but are seldom drawn fully into conversations about engagement. Engagement data is not readily shared nor is it transparent. In this approach there is frequent reference to buy-in as leaders are transformed into sellers while employees are viewed as buyers or consumers of engagement. Engagement is seen as a problem to be solved rather than an experience to be lived.
WITH: In this approach employee engagement is co-created with employees. Two of my favorite lines that demonstrate this are “never do anything about me without me” and “if you want everyone on the same page you need to give them an opportunity to write on that page.” Employees are seen as authentic partners and their input may even begin with the organization asking them to help formulate any engagement questions used in surveys or data collection. Engagement is much less about a program or initiative and more about the verb of engage being infused into how we lead, manage, and work. There is a lack of any sense of victims, villains, and helplessness in the organization. Employees are responsible for their own engagement while everyone is accountable for their influence and impact on the engagement of everyone else. Employee engagement is truly viewed and approached as being a benefit for all.
If you want to be successful with employee engagement in 2015 don’t you think it is time to get with it?
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and educator who is working more and more on with!
Employee Engagement: 23 Things to Avoid That Cause Iatrogenic Disengagement
Are you and your organization creating the very disengagement you are trying to solve?
In medicine there is a term call iatrogenic illness, define as of or relating to illness caused by medical examination or treatment. A common example is to go to the hospital for a procedure and end up with an infection. We don’t want to infect our employees with disengagement but many things we do may unknowingly or unintentionally be creating the very problem we are trying to solve.
Here is a list of 23 sources of disengagement caused by our efforts to engage:
- Taking away personal responsibility for engagement when we state that managers, leaders, or organizations are responsible for engagement.
- Using anonymous surveys unintentionally tells employees we don’t want to know who they are.
- Asking for comments on a survey and never ensuring that employees know that their comments were read and respected.
- Stopping our employee engagement work because we don’t like the lack of results we have received.
- Asking questions on an engagement survey that we lack the wherewithal to address.
- Taking far too much time between when we survey employees and when we release the data and sometimes never releasing the data. Engagement measure should be more like good toasters. You insert the data and have it pop up in no time.
- When employee engagement is talked about as something extra or a thing.
- Creating high levels of frustration when we foster motivation but fail to give employees the proper tools to do the job.
- When engagement is used as a new word for motivation and we fail to look deeper.
- Telling employees that we expect rather than encourage them to have a best friend at work.
- Having employee engagement as a mere program or event and expecting sustainable improvement.
- When we fail to ask employees directly what can be done to improve engagement.
- When we fail to ask employees to write some of the engagement survey questions.
- When we fail to believe in our employees.
- When disengagement is treated as a punishable offence rather than a trigger for a conversation.
- When we fail to address progress and setback as a key engagement issue.
- When our work becomes creepy.
- Failing to end something before we begin something.
- When we resort to hype and hyperbole about being a great place to work.
- Paying lots of money to be a great place to work and get the badge but there is a lack of substance behind the badge or credential.
- Believing that everyone should find the same sense of meaning from their work.
- Failure to make use of the inherent engagement in smart phones and tablets.
- Failure to move from surveys to just in time bio-measures of engagement.
What sources of iatrogenic disengagement are you seeing?
David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who founded the 6300 member global Employee Engagement Network.