Turning Employee Engagement into Results: Removing Barriers to Action

Turning Employee Engagement into Results: Removing Barriers to Action

The main reason businesses care about employee engagement is because engaged employees do more: they perform better, they go the extra mile, they stay late, they solve problems, they coach their peers, etc..  In short, employee engagement is important because of the behaviors that engaged employees demonstrate. But where do these good behaviors come from? They come from engaged employees being motivated to act, both within and beyond the scope of their roles, in the service of the organization’s goals.

There are two ideas worth discussing with respect to the motivational component of employee engagement. First (the subject of this post): why should we distinguish between motivation and action in the employee engagement context? Second, (the subject of next week’s post): what precisely are engaged employees motivated to do? In other words, how do you draw boundaries around the motivational aspect of employee engagement? 

Behaviors are such an important outcome of the state of being engaged that many people in both the academic and practitioner communities blur the lines between employee engagement and the behaviors that result from it. Although the difference might seem semantic, it’s not. Distinguishing between motivation and action makes sense from both a research* and practitioner perspective.

For leaders, one good reason to discern motivation from action is that, as we all know, a lot of things can come between intention to actual behavior.  It’s true at home (“I really meant to do laundry this weekend but then …”) and at work (“I was planning to attend that online training but then ….”).  It follows then that employee engagement levels may not be the only cause, or even the primary cause, of not achieving results. Instead, employees may face barriers to acting on their motivation to contribute. By identifying and removing these barriers, leaders can better harness the potential of employee engagement.

What sorts of barriers stand between engagement and results? Here are three broad categories of barriers (adapted from VitalSmarts):

1. Individual barriers. An employee is engaged but lacks skills to contribute at the level she wants to. This one is relatively easy: help this person acquire the right skills through traditional or non-traditional learning opportunities.

2. Social barriers. An employee is engaged but in an environment where action is discouraged. If the problem is more widespread than one micro-manager, a culture-change program aimed at empowering employees may be appropriate. 

3. Structural barriers. An employee is engaged but is systemically prevented from action by bureaucracy, inadequate resources, poor processes, etc.. Again, unfortunately, no quick fix exists. In the long run, a long-term commitment to continuous improvement for internal operations can create an environment in which engagement translates to action.

I’m interested to hear from you how you’ve personally or organizationally overcome barriers that stood between engagement and performance!

* For researchers, distinguishing between motivation and behavior enables a clearer definition of employee engagement, thus facilitating better understanding of the construct in relationship to antecedents and outcomes. Specifying the motivational component of engagement complements the emotional and rational components, consistent with attitude theory.