Energized Disengagement – The New Trend

I’m going to tell you the one thing no incentive company will tell you. 

Don’t run that recognition and reward program to fix your employee engagement problems.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it.  Don’t do it.

Run a Program Save The World

Here’s the problem.  Most of the time the people tasked with driving employee engagement have no control over whether employees are engaged.  I’m about talking HR departments, “employee engagement” departments, personnel departments.  Typically these departments are given the task of “engaging employees.”  But they CANNOT do anything about it.  Yet they try.

They go to webinars to learn what they could google.  They google what they already know.  They buy a program, system, software, idea, that theoretically enables each person in the organization to drive engagement.  They install the “system” to engage the people.  And they wait.  And it helps a little.

But it doesn’t solve the problem. 

So they go to more webinars, read more white papers, listen to more consultants. 

But the real advice no one wants to tell them is this…

Don’t Run The Program

#Truth: You don’t have poor engagement because you don’t have a reward strategy or system. 

You have poor engagement because your management (read managers – read the people around the table you so want a seat at) all suck at engagement.

Hush Little Baby Don’t Say A Word…

Here’s what bad management looks like and why a program won’t help (paraphrasing here)…

34% of US employees indicate that they fail to speak up in the workplace for fear of some type of retribution.  Factors that affect whether employee “engage” are:

• Constant negative feedback from supervisors and leaders
• Leaders perceived as a dissenting voice (shooting-down new ideas out of hand, or ignoring feedback)
• Fear of demotion or loss of job
• Raising issues draws undue attention to individuals or groups who make suggestions
• Employees perceive that there is no procedural justice (fair use and application of employee feedback)

That is from DecisionWise Inc. and a recent study they conducted.

Read that list again and ask yourself this question…

Would a reward and recognition program fix those issues?

No.

Running a program will simply energize the disengagement you already have creating even more disengagement.

What will fix that problem – and a variety of other engagement issues is …

Better manager training, better hiring, better performance discussions,
heck – better human beings.

Don’t run a program to fix engagement.

Fix your people so they engage.

Then call me about how to reinforce that change in the organization so that it becomes the culture.

Related articles

• Why Do We Love to Work at Companies Where We Don’t Have to Work? (i2i-align.com)
• Another Post About Employee Disengagement (i2i-align.com)