It’s well documented that employee engagement has strong ties to critical business outcomes including productivity, profitability, and customer focus. Engaged workers—those involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work— lead innovation, create new products, and make new customers. They are a key factor behind a company’s success.
What can leaders do to increase employee engagement?
First, we must realize that engagement is something that workers do themselves. Managers can create incentive programs, but ultimately they can’t engage the hearts of their people. People decide for themselves whether to engage or not!
There is a great gulf that separates an incentivized worker from an engaged employee. An incentivized worker can show up on time, do what they’re told, have a perfect checklist, and not leave early. They can do everything asked of them, exactly as requested, and even at the right pace.
But how different is that behavior from the one who comes to work in the morning with this thought: “I will make a difference in this company today!” Engaged workers bring their brains and their imagination to the job. Engaged workers have their hearts beating and eyes open. They’re looking around and paying attention.
Let’s say the engaged employee is a woman working at the call center. She’s just talked to a customer and followed the script perfectly. She gets to the end of the call, having done everything according to the training, hangs up, and thinks to herself, “We can do better!” And thinking of a better solution, she calls the customer back and says, “You know, I was just thinking about our call a few minutes ago, and I wasn’t satisfied with how that turned out. May I propose something else?”
That employee is an alive, sentient, passionate, thinking, caring human being who is bringing agency to the job. How distinct is this from the worker who only follows the training to a tee with a perfect checklist? What accounts for the difference? The person who is primarily motivated by incentives, or keeping the checklist, is unable to offer the customer anything more of themselves than that principles covered in the training.
And life isn’t like that is it? Life brings us hairpin curves, setbacks, and moments in each day that can’t be anticipated. Real life requires people to show up in those moments—with managers nowhere in sight—having their own mind, heart, integrity, and honor at stake, and take action to do the right thing.
Now here’s the question: what causes a human being to awaken at work, and to offer fully engaged, good work?
The short answer to the question is leadership.
If employees know that the company they serve has integrity, its leadership can be trusted, and their manager's word is their bond, they will more likely engage from the heart at a higher level. For such a company, for such a leader, a human being will one day say, "Here, now, is a place where I can bring the best of me!