Just Say No To Employee Engagement - Businessweek Debate Room

I urge you to take a minute and jump over to the BusinessWeek online section called "The Debate Room." 

Myself and Greg Lederman from Brand Integrity take to the podium for a verbal smackdown.

For those not familiar, the Debate Room presents two sides of an issue and asks readers to weigh in and comment.  Obviously, the topics are polarizing and the comments are probably the best part.  As of around 5:30 pm EDT May 28th the debate was around employee engagement - the topic was:

Employee Engagement: Enough!
The recession is no time to worry about employee engagement. Pro or con?

Believe it or not - I took the "Pro" side of that discussion - meaning I believe you really need to worry about something other than engagement right now.

I can hear supporters of employee engagement cracking their knuckles in preparation for typing their comments.  I hope they do.  I also hope some of them jump over here and take a few minutes to read this post to understand my point of view.

First - I'm not anti-engagement.  I'm pro quality business management.  Second - Employee engagement is a good thing - I like it - I really do.

But...

Engagement is second on the "must do today" list.  First - you have to run your business.  And you need to run it well. 

The point is that until a company sets its mind to addressing issues in the management ranks no "program" or initiative targeting engagement is going to work.  It will be lipstick on a pig.  Focus on the root cause of employee disengagement - and I believe that is poor management - or clueless management as the case may be.

You may be clueless if you're worried about employee engagement but...

• You still paid bonuses (and defended them) to managers in divisions that lost money
• You still have executive parking right where the employees walk in everyday - and they never see executive cars in the morning or the evening (just 11am - 3pm)
• You tell employees "don't rock the boat" just keep your head down and do what you're told
• You micro-manage everything because you don't want ANY bad news leaking out of your department

Well, you get the idea.

Enjoy the debate over on Business Week - just know we love employees and we love engaged employees even more.  We're not too keen on clueless management and engagement programs with no foundation within executive ranks.

PS... media week for me - also in a USAToday post on the new Ritz Carlton on BofA campus.  Commenter called me a chucklehead.  I think I might like that.

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