An earlier article, Why Leaders Grow Employee Engagement Cultures...and How!, explored and explained employee engagement from several points of view. To round out the circle, this article clarifies what employee engagement is not.
We look for traits of really engaged behavior to recognize those individuals, use them as examples, and allow them to operate as champions for engagement within the culture. We should also be clear-eyed in noticing behaviors that signify the absence of engagement. It is easier to institute improvement when we know both what we want the improvement to be and what we want to improve.
The antitheses of engaged employee are unengaged (coasting in neutral) and actively disengaged (applying the brakes if not in full reverse) employees. In their book Follow This Path, Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina explored delineations among employees who are engaged, actively disengaged, and not engaged, as labeled defined by the Gallup Organization’s Q12 survey.
Here are their lists of some traits of the latter two categories:
Not Engaged
- Meets the basics.
- Confusion or ability to act with confidence.
- Low-risk responses and commitment.
- No real sense of achievement.
- Possible commitment to organization, but not always to role or work group.
- Will speak frankly about negative views.
Actively Disengaged
- Normal reaction starts with resistance.
- Low trust.
- "I'm OK, everyone else is not."
- Inability to move from the problem to the solution.
- Low commitment to company, work group, and role.
- Isolation
- Won't speak frankly about negative views but will act out frustration, either overtly or covertly
The difference between the not engaged and the disengaged is merely degree. The manager's objective is to increase (and improve) employee engagement across the entire population. So the manager pays attention to both types, but the actively disengaged has a longer path to follow to reach an acceptable level of engagement. Hence, he garners more attention as one potentially to be released earlier.
Dozens of sources offer scores of solutions to unsatisfactory levels of employee engagement. Unfortunately, these solutions sometimes seek to substitute for real employee engagement. These substitutes, though somewhat valuable, fall short of the behavior that continually generates results a business requires: profit, customer loyalty and referrals, employee retention, quality production, and more.
Here are several characteristics and behaviors those solutions seek to obtain:
- Motivation: a drive to succeed, to achieve.
- Commitment: an alignment with a desired goal or objective and willingness to work towards same.
- High morale: a combination of energy and involvement that boosts productivity.
- Job appreciation: an enjoyment of and gratitude for the work one does.
- Busy-ness: a willingness to keep oneself fully occupied, rather than idle.
- Volunteerism: offering one's services for assignments outside the job description.
- Quantity = quality: an opinion that producing more work is as valuable as producing good work (see busy-ness)
Do not confuse any of the above employee engagement. Each item listed (except the last) is valuable in its own right. Each item (except the last) may contribute to or result from true employee engagement. But none of them alone stands for the individual's investment of energy, skill, ability, and eagerness in the work performed.
Managers dedicated to building and maintaining a true Employee Engagement Culture need to know both what it includes and what it is not.
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