The Goldilocks Phenomenon (Employee Engagement Insights from a Successful Job Search 1)

The Goldilocks Phenomenon (Employee Engagement Insights from a Successful Job Search 1)

Why hiring and job-searching for employee engagement makes sense

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Earlier this month, I successfully completed a job search when I accepted a new, employee engagement-focused position with a global HR consultancy. I’ll share more about the firm and my role in a later post, but suffice it to say that I am EXTREMELY excited to be embarking on this next phase of my career with my new team.

This job search looked remarkably different than my last job search four years ago, from both sides of the table. Recruiters screened me for 19 jobs over eight months, and I spoke with with hiring managers and other team members for over a dozen of these roles.  I called, drove, flew and Skype-d for interviews; I took personality tests and spoke with industrial psychologists; I went through a roller coaster of emotions regarding the search process and within my role with my prior firm. In other words, it was a long, careful, deliberate (=frustrating) matching process on both sides, sometimes interrupted by uncontrollable external forces. 

I was, of course, invested in the outcome of the search process. I was also interested to observe what the process told me about my own engagement and how to optimize it for my current and next position. Too, it was an amazing opportunity to speak to professionals in over a dozen organizations about their views on employee engagement and its role in business today. I look forward to sharing what I think it all means to job seekers, business leaders and HR professionals in several upcoming posts, starting with what I call The Goldilocks Phenomena, which is another way of saying that employers and candidates are hiring for employee engagement.

The Goldilocks Phenomena: why hiring and job-searching for employee engagement makes sense

Many believe that carpet-bombing employers with resumes is an effective job search tactic. The idea is that high volume increases your probability of response. I won’t argue that logic if you need a job and any job will do. But if you are motivated (not desperate) to find your next right role, this strategy can result in a lot of false hits – meaning interviews that are a waste of time for both the organization and the candidate.

“So what if there are a lot of conversations that don’t pan out?” one might wonder. "It's good interview practice, right?" Maybe, but there is a cost on both sides. 

For candidates, it’s discouraging, tiring and expensive to spend ones time, energy, gas and vacation days interviewing for roles only to be told you aren’t “the right fit.” Worse, what if you end up in a job wherein you aren’t engaged? You’ll just have to go through the process again.

For organizations, it is time-consuming and distracting to call in teams of five to six highly-compensated business professionals to interview a candidate who has a resume gap, is over-qualified (and thus a flight risk), or culturally better suited elsewhere. In other words, organizations only want to hire if the conditions are right for long-term employee engagement. And as we know, increasing the cost of job searches makes companies even more cautious about hiring in only the right fit, which slows down the process even further.

Reading between the lines, companies and job seekers are / should be more discerning than ever about fitting for employee engagement. For job seekers, this means more research before application to increase interviews for roles you really want. For organizations, this means further defining the conditions that lead to engagement in your team and incorporating evaluation of these into the screening process.

The good news is, the process can work. I found exactly the next right role for me, and my new team found a highly engaged, highly-qualified expert to build out a practice. But I also see it as good news for business, in that we have the potential to improve the recruiting process by seeing it through an engagement lens.

Thanksgiving: the Secret Shortcut to Employee Engagement?

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Thanksgiving: the Secret Shortcut to Employee Engagement?

Why Gratitude Can Help Us Be More Engaged with Our Work

What about your job are you thankful for? By finding a few tangible answers to this question, you’re already on the road to greater employee engagement.

In the U.S., our Thanksgiving holiday season is a time to acknowledge and appreciate blessings. Recent happiness research at institutions like the University of California at Berkeley shows that gratitude as a regular practice can have social, physical and psychological benefits.

Looking under the hood, so to speak, it can be deduced that the benefits of gratitude can lead to greater employee engagement within an individual as well, following my definition of employee engagement as an attitude towards one’s work in one’s organization comprising vigor, dedication, absorption, psychological empowerment and motivation. Specifically, research shows a practice of gratitude can lead to increased enthusiasm and motivates helpful action, two components of employee engagement. It can also reduce stress and anxiety, which can be barriers to employee engagement. It improves relationships, the critical driver of engagement in the workplace. Click here to read more from U.C. Berkeley on gratitude.

The practice of gratitude, it turns out, is a practice. Like bowling, it may come easier to some people than others, but anyone can improve through focused effort and repetition. I suggest an achievable goal for those new to daily thanksgiving, since small changes are more likely to stick than big ones. Set a calendar reminder for the start of each workday to acknowledge one thing you are grateful for about your work. Keep that appointment every day, and try not to list the same thing twice. It can be really basic, “I am grateful there is indoor plumbing in my office” to very specific, “I am grateful Susan knew how to run that report and was willing to help.”

If that suggestion doesn’t appeal to you, or you already keep a gratitude journal, consider adapting another gratitude practice to the workplace.

And here’s the trick: stick with the practice for weeks: long after you have decided it isn’t doing you any good. Like many healthy habits (e.g., light exercise or meditation) the benefits may or may not appear directly linked to the practice, but if you pay attention, the correlation is undeniable.

As for me, I am thankful for you, my readers, both known and unknown, who help motivate me to keep learning and sharing about employee engagement. Thank you, and I wish you all a great start to the holiday season!

The Road to Disengagement Is Paved with Good Intensions

The Road to Disengagement Is Paved with Good Intentions

4 Well-Intended Mistakes Managers Make that Lead to Disengagement – and How to Fix Them

Most of what I share in this blog is BEST practice learnings from a career and a doctoral dissertation in employee engagement. Today, I’m going to share some WORST practices.

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Normally, I’m a proponent of an organizational development concept some term “amplifying positive deviance.” The idea is that by placing a positive spotlight on what’s going right in a change effort, you’ll inspire and encourage others to adopt that behavior. Combine that with a reliable measurement practice and a solid demonstration of results, and you can create sustainable change. Conversely, focusing on negating undesirable behavior proves less effective.

However, I have heard stories of senior managers who, for apparently logical reasons, have participated in disengaging behaviors. I thought it important to mention in some of these cases how a seemingly-good intention went wrong, and how to recover.  

Names have been changed to protect the innocent and clueless…

Situation	Management rationale	Why it’s disengaging	Fix
Employees in different departments compare notes and discover they received different reward or recognition for similar character and quality work on a project. A manager denies or retracts recognition for a staff member given by another party, and the employee is made aware.	“We don’t have enough money in the budget to give an award, and if I talk say something, they’ll expect a bonus.” “In our team, we don’t give special recognition for staff completing regular job assignments.” “We can’t set a precedent for this type of recognition.”	Recognition leads to psychological empowerment, motivation and other good-things associated with engagement. Becoming aware of an absence of recognition has the opposite effect: we feel under-valued, insecure or even undermined. Fundamentally, what we perceive to be unfair treatment leads to distrust.	Leaders should proactively seek to restore trust. Be generous in public and private acknowledgement of work well done, particularly if an inconsistency between departments has been exposed. Be transparent about what’s required locally to achieve reward and recognition, and be consistent in how they are allocated. Have conversations with the affected team members and listen. Don’t “blame” others for the inconsistency, but acknowledge limitations.
An employee is given management responsibility for a project, but his manager requests to approve all project-related activities. An employee is given accountability for a project requiring resource spend but is not given a budget to manage.	“We’re all one team working together towards common goals, and we can operate seamlessly.” “When I put XXX into the management role, I didn't realize how high visibility this project is, and he isn't ready.”	Micromanagement by any other name still stinks. Going back to engagement basics, micromanagement leads to psychological dis-empowerment, which leads to disengagement. Worse, it’s possible that an employee who is given accountability but not authority to manage a project could perceive they are being set up as a scapegoat (which indicates or increases distrust).	Focus on establishing management practices that promote both empowerment and accountability. Set clear and consistent goals, and regularly checking in on these. If a new manager needs additional coaching, help him find it from someone who isn't you. If performance is an issue, address that head-on. No one and no organization benefits when difficult conversations are avoided.

No manager is perfect, and the good news is, disengaging behavior can be counteracted and trust restored with dialogue, respect and consideration.

How have you repaired a situation where disengagement was the unintended consequence of a management decision?

What the Dalai Lama Can Teach Us about Employee Engagement

What the Dalai Lama Can Teach Us about Employee Engagement

How a Few Basic Ideas Will Transform Your Workplace and Your Life

This week, I was fortunate enough to see the Dalai Lama speak at an event sponsored by Emory University in Atlanta. I am not a practicing Buddhist, nor particularly familiar with his teachings. But I was excited to be in the presence of a leader who is changing the world by promoting peace, love and understanding. What I wasn’t expecting is how easily I related his teachings to the field of employee engagement.

What, you might ask, could a Tibetan Monk know about employee engagement? Do they even have employees at monasteries?

Technically, His Holiness did not explicitly address employee engagement. But he was close. He spoke about principles that lead to personal happiness and wellbeing including compassion, love and respect. The practice of these principles also becomes the basis for healthy interpersonal relationships. When scaled out far enough, they create conditions that lead to world peace.  In short, respect of self and others leads to trust, which leads to friendship and collaboration, which leads to happiness. Conversely, a lack of compassion and respect leads to distrust and competition – and other similar emotions that can be very bad for health, peace of mind and society.

Those of you have been reading this blog over time will appreciate that the word “trust” rang some bells for me as my dissertation research showed that trust is a critical factor underpinning employee engagement. In fact, I have argued that trust is the single most important workplace feature that a leader can cultivate. Apparently, not surprisingly, this truth holds over a variety of contexts!

Some other insights I came away with can be best categorized as “insights for the engaged leader.” For example, he called the audience to cultivate a “trained sense of concern for others’ wellbeing,” and to practice pairing this with wise discernment – as good a call to leadership as I’ve heard recently. He also modeled leadership behaviors, including being wholly present with his co-presenters, and asking smart, informed questions about the research scientists presented to him.

He also reminded us that in today’s world, real challenges require real change. The end to conflicts at a large and small scale requires that we value the common interest at least as much as our individual interests. He also noted that change starts from within, and action is more important than faith. Practicing respect and compassion is one way we can all lead change in our personal and professional lives alike.

What teachers from unexpected arenas have influenced your employee engagement practice and how?

#SocialMedia and Employee Engagement

#SocialMedia and Employee Engagement
Can you really Tweet your way to engaged employees?

How many social media apps do you have on your smart phone? How many do you use?

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Given that both are such hot topics, it was only a matter of time before employee engagement and social media intersected. At the last employee engagement conference I attended, for example, vendors offered to sell my company social media platforms ranging from experts databases to short messaging services to discussion forums. There was a presentation on adapting social media capabilities in common intranet platforms to drive engagement. Which got me thinking: can social media truly drive employee engagement?

Rather than rely solely on sentiment from the popular press or information from companies whose livelihood is tied to social media, I decided to do my own research. To understand how people trendier than me use social media, I threw myself into: blogging (obviously), Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. (If this sounds like a nightmare to you, I recommend trying it. It’s like that required statistics course in college: you hated it, but what you learn turns out to be surprisingly useful). I ran usage statistics and a user opinion survey on the intranet in my company. I gathered best practices through industry groups to which I belong. I re-read the interviews I conducted with experts during my dissertation research.

My findings can be simply summarized: social media is a tool, not something that in and of itself creates employee engagement.

In fact, social media tools are likely to be adopted or not based on whether an employee is already engaged, rather than inspiring her to engage. If you’re already excited to do your work, maybe you’ll follow your colleagues on Sharepoint. If you are just showing up for a paycheck, the following capability isn’t likely to get you on-board. This is particularly true the further removed from the Millennial generation an employee is.

Further, putting an internal social media platform into place without a clear understanding of how you want to use them to drive business results is a waste of resource. Although it’s cool and “Millennials are doing it,” the truth is, like any investment, when undirected, social media is not likely to produce improvements in business performance (with a few industry-specific exceptions, I imagine).  Some quick guidelines:

1. Social media is great for external communications applications like capturing a shallow amount of attention for marketing or PR. 
2. Socially, it’s great for staying connected to people you don’t know very well across long distances (literal or figurative). 
3. Internally, social media can provide mechanisms for collaboration and knowledge sharing, but not the motivation to do so. Just because you build it does not mean they will come. So, any foray into social media within an organization should be accompanied by a robust change management plan. 

Which social media tools has your organization successfully adopted to amplify employee engagement, and how?

So You Want to Hire an Employee Engagement Consultant?

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So You Want to Hire an Employee Engagement Consultant?
What to Know When Thinking Through Vendor Selection

The CEO just left your office. The good news? She is finally showing an interest in employee engagement. The bad news? She is finally showing an interest in employee engagement. If you are like most executive leaders in an HR function, you are already familiar with the concept of employee engagement.

If you are in a large-enough organization, you may even have staff whose job responsibilities include certain employee engagement related activities. However, it is unlikely that you have in-house a top-tier team of employee engagement experts. Perhaps the time has come to hire a consultant.

The purpose of this blog post is not to suggest which employee engagement consultant is right for your business. Instead, my goal is to help you think about what criteria to use when selecting a vendor. There are several dimensions on which employee engagement vendors vary, and on which an individual might select effectively among them. Here are some helpful questions in selecting an employee engagement consultant.

What are you aiming to achieve? For many organizations just getting started in employee engagement services, the list of options and opportunities can be overwhelming. In some cases, undertaking a big new employee engagement project can be more than an organization has the capacity to absorb. I generally recommend that a first foray into employee engagement services emphasize an engagement model and measurement practice that resonates with the organization in its current state. Most large consultancies are happy to discuss how they conceptualize and measure engagement: among those you consider, which feels intuitive and actionable to you?

What gaps do you need filled? Like any vendor relationship, the ideal partnership will deliver across a number of areas, but in the initial selection it’s helpful to think through what resources and expertise you have in house, and what you need to bring in. For example, some engagement vendors specialize in measurement, whereas others shine in follow-on advisory and HR services. Others are best known for robust benchmarking, whereas others have strength in a technology platform. Understanding your gaps ensures you select the vendor who best fills them.

What is your budget? Vendors have a variety of pricing models, and many will work to meet your business needs within a budget if you’re clear about what your needs and budget are. For reference, some vendors price per project, others per employee. The structure depends on the amount of consultant labor required to complete the project, which is almost always in the report-generation phase. Other factors influencing cost are the number of languages the survey and responses are translated to/from, whether a “pulse” follow up is required, whether the vendor is to also manage employee focus groups to collect qualitative data, etc…

Who has the best reputation in your region? Depending upon the size and scope of your business, you may be looking to use this consultancy to help you benchmark your firm against others in the area competing for top talent. If this is a primary consideration, and the above two criteria have already been met, consider which vendor’s stamp of approval is most likely to influence others in your business ecosystem positively.

Of course, the more experienced you become working with employee engagement, the more sophisticated your organization will become internally, so finally consider whether your vendor is truly an employee engagement partner who will learn and grow with your organization.

Did your organization use additional or alternative criteria? Please join the conversation with a comment!

A Little More Action: Best Practices for Measuring Employee Engagement

A Little More Action: Best Practices for Measuring Employee Engagement

What Leaders Need to Know Before Launching an Employee Engagement Survey

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How do you measure employee engagement? If you’re like most of the employee engagement experts I interviewed for my dissertation research, you’re conducting a survey. You’re asking 80-110 questions, sometimes translated into multiple languages, including an open-ended question.  The questions you use to measure employee engagement vary depending on which firm you are working with, and most of your survey questions measure the drivers of employee engagement, like culture, communications, pay and benefits, strategy alignment and more.

So surveys are ubiquitous, and both the responses and participation rates contain valuable engagement information. But there are plenty of other ways to measure engagement. For example, one approach is to track if people actually exhibit engaged behaviors: participation in and satisfaction with employee meetings and events, participation in opinion polls and online discussion threads related to critical business issues, social media participation, and participation in related programs like recognition programs. Other metrics include 360 degree feedback for leaders, focus groups, and intranet story readership.

The key idea for leaders, though, is not that there exist several ways to measure engagement. Instead, it’s to realize that measurement is a tool that can amplify engagement or disengagement, depending on how the company responds to feedback received.  In the words of one interviewee:

“In the area of engagement I think the big issue is, the measurement really only matters if you do something about it. That’ s one of our consults to leadership all the time is that don’ t measure it if you don’ t want to do anything with the feedback, because you are only going to exacerbate any issue discovered because they will think something is going to be addressed with things they bring up, and when they find out nothing happens, then you are almost worse off than asking the question to begin with.” – V.P., Communications, automotive corporation

In other words, measurement practices can make employee engagement better or worse! Unfortunately, too many of us know from personal experience how demotivating it can be to invest our time and energy in a project only to have it go nowhere. When employees complete a survey and nothing happens, that's the effect.

The good news is, there are a few simple things we can do to make measurement amplify engagement:

• Return results to employees promptly

• Communicate plans to respond to the feedback

• Provide regular updates on the progress of these plans over time

How is your firm measuring engagement? What best practices can you share?