Better work, not more work

Your engagement strategy isn’t an engagement strategy. Or at least it shouldn’t be. I was reminded of that when reading the CIPD Employee Outlook Spring 2015. There’s some really good stuff in there, and some good insight into what people want from work.

But this stuck out for me. When measuring Employee Engagement, under “Going the extra mile” the two questions are:

• I will often take on more work to help relieve my colleagues’ workloads
• I will often work for more hours than those I am paid or contracted to do

I’ve got some concerns about those as markers of engagement.

It’s the same qualm that I share with this Engage for Success video. I really like E4S’s work, but just 40-odd seconds into this they’re talking about an engaged employee as “…the one that stays late when it really counts…”

That might be part of engagement, but it’s a small part. And there’s a risk too. Because if this idea...

...takes hold in your workforce, then any engagement strategy is sunk.

Now, for me, the solution to that is not talking about engagement. It isn’t an “engagement strategy”; it’s a “being-a-better-employer” strategy. But more than that, it’s about not taking a narrow view of the results of engagement. For me, an engaged employee is going to apply themselves more, but because they will enjoy and be satisfied by that greater application. That’s going to make for better work, not just more work.

Arguably, an office full of people staying late is a sign of disengagement. I mean, they don’t look very happy, do they? And maybe they need better support, and want a better work-life balance, And, just maybe, if they were a bit more engaged, they’d have got the work done in the working day. They’d have seen the issue more clearly, they’d have made fewer errors, they’d have brought more people with them.

If your people should have gone home for their tea, what does it really say?