Sanna Wolstenholme's Groups
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Employee Engagement Wr...
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Manager Tools for Empl...
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Research on EE
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Sanna Wolstenholme's Page
Profile Information
- Who are you?
- I am a Finnish postgraduate student doing my MBA thesis on Employee Engagement. I would like to work as an HR manager in the future as I find this area rather interesting.
Any help, ideas and opinions on Employee Engagement are more than welcome. I would also like to hear Your own experience of EE (i.e. in your organisation)
- What is your interest or involvement in employee engagement?
- Doing a MBA thesis on EE
- Where are you located?
- DK
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though published earlier, I found it quite relevant relating innovation and engagement
Remember that employees are human first; seek to build what matters the most to humans - personal relationships.
Communicating "what" is not enough. Explain the "why" behind everything.
Thanks Ben. Look forward to checking out these articles.
I'm a reporter seeking employers that have done employee engagement surveys. I'd like to locate people at small- to mid-sized companies where you've wrestled with how to write effective questions that actually get at engagement (as opposed to yet ...
(This blog post accompanied a recent presentation to an employers annual conference on productivity and engagement, and whether or not Social Media has a negative impact)
A common workplace perception is that social media is a waste of time, so w...
Ask, and Ye Shall Receive. And, Boss spelled backwards is certainly self-explanatory. (As in, "I'm The Boss here. (response: You certainly are! ) ) (hee hee)
ALL of us know more than ANY of us. And it is dangerous to know The Answer, since there are generally LOTS of possibilities for workplace improvements.
Remember: Nobody Ever Washes a Rental Car! Engagement is about perceived ownership and active involvement.
Ask people what they want to achieve, then help them achieve it.
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What is EE? Here is a post I left on this question.
You pose a challenging question, but there is, I believe, a clear and unambiguous answer. Here is my biologic stab at defining enagagement.
Engagement (bonding) occurs, I suggest, when 1) we value something or someone, and 2) we willingly invest effort in that person, place or thing. In other words, the brain contains an investment-tracking mechanism, possibly located in the ventro medial prefrontal lobe, that causes the things we invest effort into to become owned psychological assets that we subsequently protect from harm. These assets could be a friend, pet, career, lovingly restored car, employer or workmates. Whenever we freely invest in someone or something we bring it inside and append it to our identity or sense of self where it quite literally becomes part of us.
This bonding process may be analogous to the territorial behavior exhibited by mammals and reptiles--except that "territory" in the human sense include many more types of assets (skills, relationships, knowledge, as well as conventional assets like money and property).
If someone threatens one of our psychic investments, the amydala is triggered and an emotional fight/flight reaction ensues--which would be measurable with a polygraph. The simplest example of this emotional bonding (engagement) process occurs between a parent and child. The parent invests mightilly in raising the child and, via this investment, brings the child inside. If the child is subsequently threatened, the parent will feel this threat as a personal attack and reacts accordingly. If the child has a success, the parent experiences this success emotionally as well via the identity-merging process. Psychiatrists call this rather spooky identity-merging process "cathexis."
In the case of employees, if they truly value their jobs and employeer and freely invest in them, then they bring the job inside where it becomes an owned asset and part of their identity. If we could hook these invested employees up to a polygraph and then criticize their employer, an emotional response would presumably register--just as if we had criticized the employee directly.
The best indication of employee engagement, therefore, is an emotional reaction when the employer is criticised or threatened. If no defensive reaction occurs, then bonding (engagement) does not exist. Engagement, in other words, is a purely emotional phenomenon created by consensual investment and measurable though emotional reactions. Words have a hard time capturing this stealthy, automatic, emotional process. Your thoughts?
No need to apologize. I am very happy to read the details of your study on EE. Good luck with it and please let us know what you discover.
Best,
Terry
I´m doing a comparative study on EE; comparing two European business units of a same corporation. I´m actually in the beginning of the process.
I´m trying to clarify the construct of EE, to investigate the predecessors of EE, to establish the specific factors influencing engagement/disengagement in both biz units, to find out the implications of disengaged employees in both org´s and make suggestions how to improve EE.
I´m also wondering is EE just an organisational commitment renamed? Is EE only a fad or has it been around for long? Where to start seems always to be the problem. I´m hoping to find also critical comments and views against EE (hypothesis is that they exists) and what would be the best way of measuring EE. Should I do a qualitative study in order to get a bit deeper (I´m planning to include the entire workforce of both units including the mgrs ca. 140 people altogether) or would a quantitative study be enough. Maybe mixing both? The idea of this research is naturally to serve the purpose of the degree but also provide valuable information to both units.
So far I have found the GALLUP study, Melcrum report, CIPD study, BlessingWhite reports, Towers Perrin ISR reports as well as some literature on the topic (i.e. Kahn). I will also study motivation, organisational behaviour, psychological approaches (behaviours of people) and... This should create the base for the research.
I would be very grateful of comments and hints where to find valuable information on the; web sites, literature, articles, reports and previous studies.
I apologise for the long reply and I hope this gave an idea of my thesis.
Sanna
Welcome to the Manager Tools group here at the EE Network. I'd like to hear more about your MBA thesis on engagement.
Terry
I like your name and wish you well with your MBA thesis. There are lots of perspectives on engagement here and I encourage you to read some of the current blog posts from members by clicking into the EE RSS Feeds menu button.
David