How Do You Define Employee Engagement?

[Derek Irvine]

The MacLeod employee engagement report (official title – “Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement”) came out last month. While there was a quick burst of news articles and blogger response to the report, I wanted to sit back, fully digest the report and reaction to it. Common themes from comments include: (1) there’s nothing new here; (2) there are not enough concrete examples of how to build engagement in organizations.

While there may be merit in these themes, one of the main problems with the concept and adoption of employee engagement is that there is no single, common accepted definition of what it is, how you measure it, and when you know you’ve achieved it. As the report asks, “Is it an attitude, a behavior or an outcome?” Some are saying that the answer – “Yes, to all three” – does little to alleviate the confusion. I disagree.

Employee engagement is a complex concept that must not be taken lightly. Too many give up on the effort because they don’t want to go to the time or trouble of convincing their executives of the importance and value of engagement (another key problem of engagement) or believe they have attempted employee engagement initiatives but not seen the impact they desire. Driving employee engagement is not a one-time project. It is something that must be pursued – relentlessly and endlessly – to achieve the results you want. However, you must also clearly define what you do want to achieve, how you will measure it, and what behaviors you will reward in employees who are helping to achieve your engagement goals.

So what definition does the report give for engagement? “A workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.”

Boil that down to – commitment, understanding, motivation, satisfaction. Are your employees committed to your company’s success? Do they even know how that success is defined, e.g., your goals and values? Are they motivated to deliver that? Are they happy in their work and satisfied to be with your organization?

If you can’t answer yes to all of these questions, you need to work on your engagement strategy and the tools you will need to achieve it. Need tips for how to do this? Check out these best practices.

[Derek Irvine]

Terrific discussion and brilliant points, everyone! If there is no objection, I would like to use some of your comments (properly attributed) in a future blog post.

[Tim Rutledge]

In my book 'Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty', Mattanie Press, 2005, 2009 I define employee engagement as the state of being attracted, committed, and fascinated.

Atttracted: I'm drawn to this work. It speaks to me.
Committed: I'm going to perform this work to the very best of my ability.
Fascinated: I love doing this work!

I have other resources on employee retention and engagement that I don't think it's appropriate to flog here. But please contact me at [e-mail] for more information.

[Jennifer Schulte]

I find this an interesting debate ... at my organization, we have an established measurement tool (survey) and clear goals & strategies in place to drive engagement. In 2009 we've started a new communication campaign that we simply call "Engagement Is ..." as an open-ended statement. This is an invitation for our associates to complete the statement with what engagement means to them, instead of pre-describing a definition for them. Of course it's about commitment, connection, line of sight, passion, emotional & rational connectivity. For us it's all about "how" we deliver results.

The Engagement Is campaign has produced really interesting responses from around the world. Some of the best statements include:
- "when associates try to make a change every day" (Germany)
- "having the opportunity to succeed and develop in a positive, fulfilling work environment" (UK)
- "being fully involved within your team and taking responsibility for your actions" (US)
- "being part of something and doing your part to make it live and breathe with energy and a passion to achieve" (Australia)
- "give yourself generously, from the heart, to the common vision and you will engage others along the way" (Dominican Republic)

and many more!

[Paul Fairlie]

The difficulties in defining, measuring and addressing employee engagement are complex and plentiful. I've gathered over 15 definitions from academic research, alone. I’m going to share a white paper that I’m writing on this problem later this year.

For now, I think the problem is historical, cultural, and a reflection of the divide between published research and professional consulting. Historically, there have been many organizational attitude concepts to describe contented or ill-contented employees (e.g., satisfaction, commitment, motivation). There have been many organizational behaviour concepts to describe their behaviour (e.g., effort, withdrawal, citizenship, absenteeism, turnover). All of these are variables have been statistically differentiated from one another for decades in published research. We also know that there are directional linkages among them. Reliable measures exist.

‘Engagement’ showed up in the published literature in the early 1990s, although Maslow had long talked about ‘peak experiences’ and Csikszentmihalyi introduced the concept of ‘flow’. At the time, engagement was viewed as a short-term, intense state of emotional arousal and cognitive attention to a valued task, when time and perspective are lost. At some point, the term came to the attention of the professional consulting industry, where it became appropriated for many forms of organizational attitudes and behaviour. It became an all-engrossing cultural ‘meme’ (although often viewed as synonymous with affective commitment). The proliferation of the term ‘engagement’ was an industry-wide re-branding effort.

At a very high level, I’m happy if one new term can galvanize a world of employers, employees and consultants, and commit us all to new actions. But, when it comes to conducting employee surveys and organizational research, I usually come to an agreement with my clients that while the term ‘employee engagement’ got us talking about whatever form of HR pain they’re experiencing (e.g., turnover), it’s time to measure well-known, validated, organizational attitudinal and behavioural variables and test for well-known driver-outcome linkages. The term ‘employee engagement’, then, becomes a straw model and an organizing principle. It’s the Buddhist ‘finger pointing to the moon’. That being said, I DO have a brief sub-scale of employee engagement as it was originally conceived (!).

For what it’s worth, here are some definitions from the academic literature:

- Self-employment and expression physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances (Kahn, 1990).

- A combination of cognitive and emotional antecedent variables in the workplace (Harter et al., 2003:206).

- Time spent thinking and concentrating on a role (attention) and losing track of time and becoming engrossed in role performance (i.e., absorption; Rothvard, 2001:665).

- Vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002).

- Heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or co-workers (Gibbons/Conference Board, 2006).

- Feeling responsible for and committed to superior job performance
so that job performance ‘matter’ to the individual (Britt et al. 2007).

- The opposite of burnout - High levels of energy, involvement in work, sense of personal efficacy at work (Maslach et al., 2001).

- Part of positive affect (ie., interest or engagement, prompting people to approach rather than avoid objects or situations.

[Peter A Hunter]

In the report there were only two definitions of engagement.
One was that it was something to do to the workforce to make them accept something else that management wanted to do to them that they might object to, like a pay cut, shorter hours or reduced vacation entitlement.

If we "Do" this engagement stuff first then we stand a better chance of getting away with the other stuff that we want to do to the workforce.
This definition, which was the majority experience of the report, puts the concept of engagement firmly into the arena of management tricks to make the workforce do what management want.
When used in this way engagement may achieve the implementers short term objective once, then when the workforce have experienced this version they will realise that they have been tricked again and raise another barrier between themselves and the managers who are seeking to manipulate them.

The second definition raised in the report, on too few occasions, is that it is the way that the workforce feel about what they do, and we all know that we can't tell people how to feel.

If we go on a date and we want someone to like us, we don't tell them to like us.
We behave in a way that they will not find objectionable, eventually they may come to like us as a result of that repeated experience.
Liking us or not is a choice that they will make as a result of that repeated experience.

We can't tell people to be engaged but we can create the environment for them at work that will allow them to choose to be engaged.

Find out what is objectionable to them, i.e. what is stopping them from engaging, and remove it.

Some of us have done this but I fear too few to affect the generally accepted idea that engagement is the former.

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk
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