Employee Engagement: One Employee’s Perspective.

Employee engagement cannot work effectively when it is an organizational imposition.

 I strongly encourage you to read the article: Employee Engagement  from the blog,  Yearning Mice on Fire: Random Ravings From the Midnight Hours.

Here are some of Dee’s words:

Employee engagement. It is the latest and greatest corporate buzz phrase, at least for the corporation I work for. But what does it mean?

If you ask the company it is a quotient based on what an employee says about the corporation, their strivings to do for the company, and whether the employees are staying with the company over the long-term or not. If you ask the employee, especially the ones who have been deemed “not engaged”, it is the level of abuse you are willing to put up with for the salary and benefits you receive.

Just like the abusive parent who sits at the table with the liquor and smokes while moaning that their children just don’t love them, the corporation’s board of directors spends a great deal of time wondering where it all went wrong. Surveys are done and staff meetings are called to go over the results. The presenter always says the same thing, “We just don’t know why you’re not engaged.” Anyone who tries to explain it to them is quickly shut up and shuffled out the door.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I am “not engaged” at work. It’s hard to care about the corporation when the corporation has made it clear that they don’t care about you. Programs put into place to benefit the employee are used instead to control and manipulate them. Incentives are used to create tension and discord between employees. The contract is interpreted and re-interpreted constantly until very few of us are even sure what the words mean anymore. Information in place to be used by all employees is instead withheld and/ or requests for information are instead funnelled to your manager who berates and threatens you. Pride in a job well done has been twisted to mean that we must give 150% effort in 50% of the time and for 30% of the costs.

I encourage you to read the full post by Dee and determine how you would respond to her if you were a leader in the organization she talked about.

By the way, I believe this is much more than just one person’s perspective on employee engagement – I believe that many employees feel this way.

David Zinger specializes in employee engagement.

Email David at dzinger@shaw.ca