4) Making the right decisions for your employer

Previously, on Employer Brand, Engagement and Culture…I’ve talked about the purpose and culture of the organisation being delivered by engagement. I’ll now embark on the circular argument that engagement is, in part, about understanding the purpose and culture.

Last time out, I hypothesised that engagement is about making the right decisions. A part of that has to be about making the right decisions for your employer. People want meaning from work, they want to know that what they do contributes to something. It satisfies a basic human desire to improve. Here’s a good blog about it, showing that this applies to even (seemingly) menial jobs. And here’s a nice graph (yes, hair-splitters, it’s about job satisfaction, but the point stands. And anyway, I always like to bring Herzberg into it).

You need to know what’s important to your employer to make the right decisions; those that will allow you and your employer to improve. So you need to know the purpose – permanent goals and the goals for today – and understand the culture. But, Hypothesis #5: Understanding of purpose and culture isn’t kept current in lots of organisations.

That makes it hard for people to engage fully, that makes it hard for them to make the right decisions, and that affects performance. But in addition, I also believe that a lot of organisations think they do a better job of maintaining understanding than they actually do. It’s done naturally in businesses where employees have a direct stake in success (a great idea in so many regards, and the stake doesn’t have to be financial).

Elsewhere, it may not be so good. As an example, I think that engagement surveys are seducing employers with a figure of 70-odd% engagement. They’re not viewing that result as 70-odd% people that are somewhat-positive-or-neutral-ish, and 20-odd% people who are, at best, cheesed off. They’re not seeing it as a rallying call to reach out and communicate better with their employees to give them a purpose, and a reason for their work.

Those of you paying attention will know by now that once I’m about 300 words in, I’m usually setting up the next blog topic – which will be on that vital communications.