Tony Quinlan on Engagement

I just read Tony Quinlan’s post on engagement at his blog parum intelligendo.

I appreciated his perspective:

I’ve come to the realisation that engagement is the new version of loyalty.  It’s a down-graded version of loyalty, and one riddled with the same basic flaw.

He asks a very important question:

while our organisations are very keen to ensure our people are engaged, how engaged is the organisation with our people?

I agree with him that engagement is a two-way street and not just something to be pulled out of employees.

The common term has become employee engagement but I am leaning more towards the term workplace engagement that might capture the responsibility for engagement residing within the organization, employees, and leaders. Engagement would also be a function of the relationships between all three.