Who's in the way of employee engagement? Leaders and managers, maybe

[Tim Wright]

The survey results keep coming in. (A full report will be available after 5/22.) Feel free, please, to add your thoughts.

The reasons people believe employee engagement doesn't (always) work fall into clumps. Yesterday I discussed and made recommendations regarding the biggest clump of reasons: unclear definition of EE.

Today let's cluster the 2nd most frequent reason employee engagement doesn't work: leaders and managers aren't prepared.

Reasons fell into these related areas:

* Leaders don't take ownership of employee engagement as a business value.

* Leaders and managers don't have sufficient knowledge of what engagement is.

* Leaders and managers don't have the skills to motivate employees to become engaged.

The truth is painful. In businesses whose leadership and management teams lack ownership, knowledge, and/or skills regarding employee engagement, employee engagement is almost destined to have minimal effect. Given all the attention engagement has received in the past several years, "minimal effect" can be read as "does not work."

So what's to be done...that is quick, easy, relatively inexpensive, but applicable and implementable?

I offer these 5 resources readily available on-line


* Employee Engagement Network. Become a member (free) and have access to more than 250 experts.

* Blogs (such as this one). Do a Google search for "employee engagement blogs".

* Employee Engagement: The People-first Approach..., Croston. (paperback)

* The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gap..., Haudan. (hardcover)

* Closing the Engagement Gap: How Great Companies..., Gebauer and Lowman (hardcover)

All books are, of course, available at Amazon.com.

The time, energy, and perhaps few dollars spent by your leaders and managers promises the opportunity for employee engagement to become an positive factor in your business success.