Like People Management which we have written about separately, this too is a hot topic. Here too, the ground is thick with advice. Perhaps, banking upon Kahneman’s observation that ‘loss aversion’ matters more to us than equivalent gains, a large portion of the literature starts with telling us why people leave organisations. This is a space of adages: People don’t leave companies, they leave managers and toxic work cultures. People don’t leave because of managers, they leave because of bad management.
There is even published research supporting the various contentions made. A function of the respective research designs, in our eyes. So one is free to cherry-pick various ideas and come up with one’s own notions of what leads to engagement in a given context.
Achieving Flow and Engagement
One important body of well-researched literature regarding human psychology that has somehow not been integrated into management practice in any practical way is the insight that was popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as ‘Flow’. He described it thus: a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Imagine! What would a leader not give to get their team into such a state?
He is not the only one to have observed this phenomenon. The idea is actually old – for instance, meditation techniques have been described by various masters (Zen, Sufi, Sanatan, Bauddhik, and I am sure several others) as joyful and not at all penance-like. Ditto with several martial artists, golfers and others (the reader is encouraged to reach out for the famous book, The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallwey), not to mention Yoga masters. Freud seemed to indicate something similar with his cryptic ‘lieben und arbeiten’ comment, when asked by Erikson as to what a psychologically healthy person should be able to do.
For reasons that we find inexplicable, a classic motivation study of the 70s has gotten completely ignored by mainstream HR literature in recent times. We are referring to the famous Job Characteristics study by Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham. A well-designed study, with several subsequent, reasonably corroborative studies published by others. The beauty of the study is its assertion that it is the work itself, if well-designed, that creates the psychological states that lead to outcomes such as motivation and satisfaction (and also, that badly designed jobs cannot be made up for by any means). The reader is encouraged to read up on the Job Characteristics Model.
While we find the lack of popularity of this model today inexplicable, we have some hunches: First, it pushed some cash cows of the consulting industry of today into a subordinate role. The model mentions that workers who are satisfied with the ‘Work Context’ respond more positively to enriched jobs than those who are not. And what is meant by Work Context in the model? Pay, job security, co-workers and supervisor. The two multi-billion dollar industries of compensation design and leadership training were thus given the short shrift by the model. Both those industries would, we suppose, like to assert that the respective dimensions (“good” pay and “good” leadership) are the most important factors leading to engagement and retention. Second, employee engagement in itself is a multi-billion dollar industry – conducting the surveys, following through into engagement workshops, benchmarking across teams, and also various external benchmarking “studies”, within industries, within countries… Such an industry needed models that were amenable to such revenue streams, especially those workshops with intact teams that really push up the value of each contract and put in place entry barriers. Hence, working backwards, the currently popular models of engagement were derived. Enough cynical speculation. In short, here is a well-recognised study that asserts that it is the work itself that, through good design, creates the psychological states that lead to motivation and satisfaction. If that work is not well-designed, no amount of effective ‘leadership’ (or pay, or any other factor) is going to make up for it (as team leaders in BPOs know only too well).
All the above granted, we would like to give credit where it is due – no one has sharpened focus today on the joyful nature of the experience of task performance under certain circumstances the way ‘Chikmihai’ (this is how people pronounce Mihaly’s name) has.
We have been in the room during many conversations around ‘Q12’ survey results, both in field functions, and in HR and with leaders. Strangely, the conversations tend to float to the later questions. And hence, the conclusions of such discussions often turn out to be predictable – that managers need to devote ever more time on one-to-one conversations with their team members, listening to their ideas, helping them learn and grow, and so on. Seldom are Q1-Q4 seen as important. But then those are the questions closest to the parameters contained in the Job Characteristics Model and in the literature on Flow! Our own reflection: apart from the cynical theories stated above, in general, employees are so distracted in organisations that they don’t really know what might make them more engaged – perhaps they don’t experience deep engagement with task for long periods of time. In particular, organisations seem to be fostering ever higher levels of stimulus tolerance and hunger. Leaving an employee alone, in order for her to do a good job, is an anxiety-generating proposition for many managers.
Several instances have been documented of seemingly well-designed consumer research that preceded spectacular product failures on launch. Perhaps many employee surveys on engagement, and the downstream actions they lead to, belong in those lists of instances.
The purpose of this entire discussion on the possible factors impacting employee engagement is to assert that real employee engagement is a phenomenon. It can be perceived when it is present (we will not get into this elaboration here). And it has powerful, tangible impacts. Engagement surveys and their reports tend to have a separate life of their own. Managers cannot afford to shrug their shoulders and claim that they did their best by religiously getting those surveys carried out, getting the subsequent engagement workshops conducted with intact teams and then following through upto implementation of the decided actions. They have got to figure out through multiple routes as to what enables their team members do good work, take responsibility, and also feel good about the work they do, and take steps accordingly.
Strangely, the conversations tend to float to the later questions of the Q12. And hence, the conclusions of such discussions often turn out to be predictable – that managers need to devote ever more time one-on-one conversations with their team members, listening to their ideas, helping them learn and grow, and so on. Seldom are Q1-Q4 seen as important.
There are at least two good reasons for functions to seek high levels of employee engagement – discretionary effort, and the value of tacit knowledge in stable teams. Both of those have powerful impacts. Besides, of course, this is an end in itself – we want it because we want it!
There is a logical point at which team members must move on to other roles. That is healthy for most systems. If they are moving on faster than that, or if they are hanging on listlessly due to other factors, the function is drawing sub-optimal value from them. The function is suffering in a way that is not visible.
Employee Engagement is an important capability of a function. However, this is a relatively rarer capability – its distribution in most organisations is patchy.
Related Readings :
OSBORNE S, HAMMOUD M. Effective Employee Engagement In The Workplace, International Journal Of Applied Management And Technology ( 2017 )
MACKAY J. ( 2018 ) Why You’re Not Finding Flow At Work. RescueTime: Blog
