Engaging the disengaged: in times of change, five basic forces help retain and engage employees

HR Magazine,  April, 2008  by Timothy R. Clark

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Too often, we act contrary to what we know. For instance, managers are quick to stipulate the central role of people, but then they go headlong into major change initiatives with little more than lip service for the human dimension. Is it a recent discovery that people are the singular source of sustained competitive advantage? No. Why, then, do researchers keep wiping our noses with it as if it were a new finding?

Consider, for example, Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric (GE). You may not agree with the aggressive methods he used, such as forced ranking, but chances are you agree with his premise. Throughout his tenure, and from the day he left GE, he went about preaching the gospel of the "human side" with evangelical fervor. Curiously, while he is recognized as the dean of CEOs in the 20th century, relatively few leaders have shown themselves to be thoroughly committed to his basic message that organizations win or lose on people. Yet, when pressed, many leaders confess such a conviction.

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Obstacles

We have a tall stack of employee engagement studies that confirm a global truth: Only 20 percent to 30 percent of employees in a typical organization are actively engaged and willing to give their best efforts. As a result, leaders launch most change efforts from a serious deficit position.

Another challenge? Managers' skill sets in facilitating change. A 2006 Price-waterhouseCoopers study of top executives found that 83 percent believed a lack of change management skills among managers made such initiatives "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to achieve.

Because engaged employees remain key to organizational change, leaders must be capable of mobilizing people on the change journey. But the ability to engage the disengaged has most organizations stumped. Few organizational leaders demonstrate the ability to engage most people most of the time. Those who do engage their employees have perhaps the ultimate competitive advantage.

So what binds a person to an organization and persuades him or her to stay engaged?

Five Forces

Leaders can increase engagement levels by creating, shaping and reinforcing experiences for employees based on five basic forces. Employees require a steady stream of replenishing experiences to connect, learn, envision, earn and contribute as they relate to the organization and to specific change initiatives. These experiences forge an emotional, intellectual, social and economic bond with the organization that allows leaders to retain people and release their discretionary efforts.

Connecting

Find an engaged employee and you are sure to find connections between that employee and the organization. This simple observation leads us to the first engagement force of connecting. Leaders are primarily responsible for creating a sense of community to satisfy the basic human need for connection. Where there is no connection, people disengage and withhold discretionary effort. Creating experiences that allow employees to build relationships is mostly about the two-way sharing of ideas, facts and feelings.

During times of change, connections are often severed and the sense of community is compromised. Disequilibrium naturally causes employees to want to strengthen their connections to peers and leaders. Remember, organizational change has a social function. It's your job to create community through multiple points of connection using the normal communications media mix prior to change, and then to increase connection points during change. Here's the rule of thumb: During change initiatives, communicate face to face with your people at least twice as much as you do when you are managing the status quo.

Learning

When employees are learning, they are much more likely to be engaged. It's your job to create learning DNA in the organization. A culture of learning needs to permeate formal and informal learning systems. This happens most effectively when you embed learning into daily workflow. Help your people understand that an employee who doesn't learn depreciates in value based on the speed of skills obsolescence.

Teach employees the concept of a competitive cycle. A competitive cycle refers to the natural rise and fall of competitive advantage. Help employees identify where your organization stands in the current cycle so you can forecast change based on the shelf life of your current competitive advantage. When employees understand where their organization stands in the cycle, it empowers them with critical situational knowledge and diffuses much of the resistance that arises when an organization announces that it's time to break camp. Change is no longer a surprise. Have you noticed that continuous learners in your organization are also the most agile employees? Have you noticed that they rarely fall in love with the status quo and stoutly resist efforts to change it?

Instill a beta mentality. Most organizational elements, including processes, structures and systems, are temporary. We harvest them only as long as they bear fruit. Markets change so quickly that employees must understand that organizational elements have simply become configurable parts that come together to create value. When a particular configuration reaches the point of diminishing returns, it's time to reconfigure parts or get new ones.