Another Post About Employee Disengagement

Yep.  Or should I say yuuup… like Dave Hester on Storage Wars?

This is another post about how employees are disengaged and I’ll even go out on a limb and say they are going to continue to be disengaged. 

You will lose thousands upon thousands of employees to disengagement over the next 10, 12, 18 months – depending on the report you read.

Every consultant on all 7 continents is making hay out of the fact that the economy sucks and employee engagement is down.  As if you needed another survey or study to tell you that when pay stagnates, benefits are held down (or even eliminated) and workload increases – employees get disengaged.

It’s tough in the trenches right now.  Your employees are looking to improve their lot in life and if your company isn’t on their short list of options you will lose them at some point in the future.

So whatchya gonna do?  Run a program?  Start “engaging.” 

Don’t.

Things You Should Know About Engagement That They Don’t Tell You

1. Creating a disengaged workforce didn’t happen overnight. 
   .

   Your employees didn’t get “disengaged” last week so you can’t engage them next week.  

   Disengagement occurred because of a lot of very small things kept happening over time – not because you didn’t give them that extra 1% in their merit increase.  Disengagement happened because you didn’t listen to them 21 times over the last 2 years.  Disengagement came about because you didn’t think that extra 10 minutes with your direct reports really mattered when you were worried about the TPS reports. 
   .
   Disengagement is death by 1,000 cuts – not a single head shot.
    

2. Creating engagement isn’t an overnight thing either. 
   .

   If you haven’t been working on engaging your employees over the past 24 months – throw in the towel for the next 24 months.  Your lack of engagement activity over the past 2 years will haunt you over the next 2 years. 

   But you still need to set the stage for year 3. 

   Don’t think because you’ve lost the immediate battle the war is over.  Start now to impact engagement 3 years from now.  I know – your boss wants immediate results.  Tough.  Loyalty isn’t built quickly.  Employees need to see ongoing, consistent corporate (read managers and C-level) behaviors that demonstrate commitment to the employee before loyalty is even part of the equation.  If you think a new program with great gift cards (or merch if you’re of that religion) is going to turn around your engagement scores let’s talk – I got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’m trying to unload.

   Understand that engagement is a strategic effort – not a tactical program.
    

3. If you’re planning a relaunch of your employee recognition and reward program in 2012 to impact engagement – stop. 
   .
   It won’t help and it will be a huge waste of money  - Unless you’ve done at least one of the following:

1. Trained managers on what “recognition” really is – how it is done effectively.
2. Trained managers on how to really engage with their direct reports and listen to them.
3. Trained managers on how to let go of worrying about “how” a job is done and teach them how to communicate the “why” work is done at an organization.  Managers are guides – not instructors.

From an influence and reward standpoint – the tactics (read “program”) are secondary to the strategy. 

Your program reinforces the values and behaviors in place at your organization.  Until you fix that, no rewards program will create engagement.

There will be some of you who will still go full-bore on the program launch in January of 2012.  Good luck. 

But without spending time working on the how your managers and C-level folks interact with their direct reports here’s the Magic 8 Ball prediction…Outlook not so good

Related articles

• YOU Are the Reason Your Recognition Program Failed (i2i-align.com)