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Employee Engagement – a Core Goal of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption ?

by Jon Husband

January 4, 2010 at 7:17 pm · Filed under Event Announcements

By now, reams have been written about the possibilities offered by the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities. The interest continues to grow as the daily use of the Web at work approaches ubiquity.

Also, reams have been written about why the engagement of knowledge-work employees is a central means of increasing productivity, effectiveness and the achievement of sustained high performance.

The greater engagement of employees has been a central aim of the work of organizational development (OD) professionals for at least the last two decades (and much further back if we are striving for precision).

In a recent Wall Street Journal blog post titled “Management’s Dirty Little Secret”, Gary Hamel brings us face-to-face with this fundamental issue:

How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more the rule than the exception—that they were characteristic of most doctors, policemen and professors? You’d be more than perplexed. You’d be incensed, outraged. You’d demand that something must be done!

Given this, why are we complacent when confronted with data that suggest most managers are more likely to douse the flames of employee enthusiasm than fan them, and are more likely to frustrate extraordinary accomplishment than to foster it?

Consider the recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies.

So why aren’t we scandalized by this data?

Effective (and/or increased) engagement of employees engenders leadership, organizational culture and the core requirement for management effectiveness at motivating, guiding and coaching employees. These issues are NOT new. However, they are all central elements to the whys, whats and hows of the productive adoption of social computing, aka Enterprise 2.0.

In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. Success here is measured by profit per employee, adjusted for capital intensity. Apple’s profit per head is significantly higher than its major competitors, as is the company’s ratio of profits to net fixed assets.

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So what does all this have to do with engagement?

Just this: in a world where customers wake up every morning asking, “what’s new, what’s different and what’s amazing?” success depends on a company’s ability to unleash the initiative, imagination and passion of employees at all levels—and this can only happen if all those folks are connected heart and soul with their work, their company and its mission.

Let me break it down:

– In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.

– Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”

– What matters today is how fast a company can generate new insights and build new knowledge—of the sort that enhances customer value.

– To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.

– Problem is, you can’t command people to be enthusiastic, creative and passionate.

– These critical ingredients for success in the creative economy are gifts that people will bring to work each day only if they’re truly engaged. (Eric Raymond made this point way back in 2001 when he argued that in the new economy, “enjoyment predicts productivity.”)

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it’s pretty much the whole game today.

[Snip ... ]

My conclusion from all of this: first, engagement is essential to the competitiveness of every company and every economy—and we need to be doing a whole lot better than we are.

We’ve got to get management’s dirty little secret out of the HR closet and into the boardroom. And second, if we’re going to improve engagement, we have to start by admitting that the real problem isn’t irksome, monotonous work, but stony-hearted, spirit-deflating managers.

Here’s my opinion about Hamel’s premise and how to address the issues he has raised :

As a generality, what companies (and managers) have not done well is acknowledge or understand that the fundamental responsiveness to customer or employee feedback comes from what people have always done well … what they, arguably, are designed to do or what is in their nature to do .. which is:

ask questions, and seek to understand
suggest alternatives, and watch or listen as they are *tried on for size*
clarify needs or desires, and find ways to deal with exceptions or delight the customer or colleague with a response that makes sense
fiddle with things to find out what works best
invent new ways, come up with good ideas, point out another possibility, etc.
decide together why and how to do something

In effect, these *social processes* have been suppressed or limited by the structures of most sizeable companies, with the attendant rules underpinning reporting relationships, spans of control, delegations of authority. This is, colloquially, why so many people like to complain about *hierarchy* … there are often better ways available, or conditions which no longer suit yesterday’s (and today’s) bureaucracy, but all too often they are not permitted to enter into play.

These ruminations bring to mind the approach known as Participative Work Design (about which I have written before on this blog), known mainly to organizational development theorists and practitioners.

Participative Design was developed in 1971 by Fred and Merrelyn Emery. They developed the method as a faster and more acceptable alternative to the Socio-Technical Systems (STS) approach, where a multi-functional task force redesigns the organisation, usually taking a whole year to do so. A design created and then implemented in this way tends to be flawed, because it is based on an incomplete assessment of reality. Also, workers do not have ownership of the design, and this generates resistance to change. And, perhaps most significantly, the organisation’s underlying power structure remains intact.

The latter points … an incomplete assessment of reality, no or little ownership on the part of workers and an unchanged power structure … have only been exacerbated by the near-real-time (and accelerating) conditions of the interconnected environment in which we now work.

Whereas STS is based on what the Emerys call the ‘bureaucratic design principle’, Participative Design reflects the ‘democratic design principle’. This design principle asserts that:

those who have to do the work are in the best position to design the way in which it is structured,
effectiveness is greatly improved when teams take responsibility for controlling their own work, and
the organisation increases its flexibility and responsiveness when people are capable of performing multiple functions and tasks.

The Emerys have also identified six basic conditions that need to be met if people’s work is to be productive and satisfying. There must be:

Elbow room for decision making
Opportunities for continuous on-the-job learning
Sufficient variety
Mutual support and respect
Meaningfulness
A desirable future, not a dead end

The examples of human interactive behaviour while doing *work* are characteristics of the give-and-take of purposeful interaction. Working interactively using wikis, or purpose-designed blogs is a social process, and helps support, and make visible, engagement with an organization’s objectives

The lightweight, inexpensive, user-friendly tools are now available to let people interact, both with each other and with larger, integrated systems, and to integrate social processes into (existing) more static and more clearly defined work processes.

In my opinion, managers everywhere should look at using participative social technologies and processes to help them …

1) learn about, encourage and support on-purpose engagement, and

2) adapt the ways they ‘manage’ to achieve results when engagement, responsiveness, creativity and innovation are the characteristics that support an organization’s sustained performance.

What do you think ?

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Steve ArdireJanuary 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm

Hi Jon – yes more participative social technologies for sure or these shocking stats of 38% mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle will likely deteriorate further and make knowledge worker organizational productivity an oxymoron

Jon HusbandJanuary 4th, 2010 at 7:57 pm

Steve A .. thanks for the supportive comment.

Steven Forth .. thanks for the RT.

Harold JarcheJanuary 4th, 2010 at 8:29 pm

Succinctly put, the problem is management. Case in point, the automotive industry. Japanese vs US automakers in North America: same workers, same raw material, sames laws; different management.

Jon HusbandJanuary 4th, 2010 at 8:31 pm

Harold … ding, ding, ding !

You win that big plush beaver (you’re Canadian) over on the corner shelf

Atle IversenJanuary 5th, 2010 at 1:39 am

As work tasks gets more complex, micro-managing and “forcing” people to do their job gets less effective.

How to increase the productivity and effectiveness of your employees/team:
– Treat them well
– Empower them
– Trust them

and they will probably surprise you and become more engaged automagically

Jon HusbandJanuary 5th, 2010 at 11:10 am

Thanks for stopping by, Atle, and yes, if people follow your suggestions about 1) treat them well, 2) empower them, and 3) trust them, the response often does seem automagical.

Funny that .. seems to work in almost all realms of life’s activities. One wonders why it has not become more prevalent in the workplace .. maybe there are core assumptions about how people are motivated and behave in operation ?

Oh, wait .. haven’t we all heard about (in the past) Theory X and Theory Y management philosophies ?

And on goes the debate(s).

But in my opinion, you put your finger on the key issues, as I believe the Emery’s (and others) did some time ago.

The E 2.0 environment just makes some of the core issues more visible and present, no ?

AmandaJanuary 7th, 2010 at 2:29 am

Jon,

Thanks for sharing Hamel’s post and adding your thoughtful commentary. I also agree with Harold in that the problem is management, but like all-things-mayonnaise-like it’s not the only problem.

What I wonder is: in any situation where a manager is behaving in a way that decreases employee engagement, is she told about it? Is there a direct conversation – the kind that creates person to person accountability rather than general stats fed back corporately through survey results? I’m guessing the answer is no. So without feedback/consequences it’s no wonder we’re in this situation (yesterday I read this US article showing 22 year all time low: http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/05/news/economy/job_satisfaction_report/index.htm)

I propose adding this layer of feedback and accountability is an important part of addressing ‘the dirty little secret’, and I like your two suggestions on using participative social technologies and processes to help us create a new story on engagement at work.

Also, I would challenge anyone in the corporate world not to let the tools (or lack of access to them due to ultra conservative technology/risk departments) get in their way. Ultimately this is about a change in how we think about work, about employees, about management. e.g. Maybe you can’t have a wiki, but can you invite some end-users into the project right from the get-go to share their experience and be able to contribute?

Don’t let the non-access to these cool network promoting technologies be your excuse for your disengaged team. Read this if you need a little inspiration: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/without-them.html

Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts
@AmandaFenton

Jon HusbandJanuary 7th, 2010 at 2:06 pm

Amanda – very cogent points, and a valuable addition to the conversation.

Yes .. these issues existed long before collaborative platforms and social tools became available. It might be said that their advent has just highlighted or made (more) explicit the core issue(s).

Michael Schrage of MIT, a long-time thought leader in the collaboration / teamwork space, once said “Networks make organizational culture and politics explicit”

Steve LeBlancJanuary 13th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

Forgive me for being the only contrarian in a room full of “I agree”. This is neither a comfortable nor a common position for me. Jon’s post is beautifully written and well thought out, exploring one of the most important issues of our time, Employee Engagement. I am better for having read it and the comments that followed.

But…

Jon’s rant seems to be to hand over “the keys to the kingdom” to employees, which is almost sure to turn out poorly.

I posted my objections to this on my own blog. http://sleve.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/employee-engagement-flaws/

Jon HusbandJanuary 13th, 2010 at 8:41 pm

Thanks for stopping by, Steve, and indeed contrary opinions are useful and welcome.

My comment here is before having read your post.

From my perspective what I’ve written isn’t properly characterized as a rant. It’s rather (again, just my opinion) a reminder, based on Gary Hamel’s public assessment of a general set of conditions, and backed up by reputable survey data, that there are well-founded organizational development and effectiveness principles dating from 40 years ago and that evolved through the years since then. Those principles and practices are based on greater participation, inclusiveness, need for collaboration .. all characteristics, objectives or features of today’s (and tomorrow’s) networked workplace.

I don’t believe I ever suggested (above) turning “the keys to the kingdom” over to the peasantry, the rabble or whatever we choose to call the bulk of any organizational pyramid. In support of that assertion, I believe that you’ll find consistent reference throughout past writings on the critical need for intelligent, purpose-based hierarchy, and the need for execs and managers to be able to assess when centralized hierarchy is most effective and decentralized network dynamics are more effective, and the wisdom, experience, and permission, to choose one or the other or both, based on the objectives in front of a team.

Many professionals looking at or involved in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives have expressed concerns generally similar to what think you are asserting. And obviously there’s observable behaviour and experience to suggest that perspective is not naive. On the other hand, a lot of what happens in networked exchanges and flows will depend upon an organization’s clarity of purpose, climate, culture, and so on. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, really.

I’ll look forward to reading your blog post, and may be back to

Olivier AmprimoJanuary 14th, 2010 at 8:29 pm

Hi Jon,

It’s always a pleasure to read you. I like your approach of digging into oldies to demonstrate that what is fashionable today is grounded on previous generations (the good and the bad). I also like the fact that you go to the essentials: trust. A topic discussed for centuries by political philosophy.

I will react today not specifically about your points but about the quotes you take from Gary Hamel. I have a huge respect for Gary Hamel as he was very inspirational to me with his works on learning in strategic partnerships, back in the early 90′.

That being said he gets down a road that Prof. Davenport takes too (http://bit.ly/8yQ4WH). A very bad one (http://bit.ly/7wdxpS). I mean the way he writes demonstrates a clear ability to ride a wave and to turn his back to his past at the very same time. A form a selfishness that only great people can afford with no arm.

Today it is very trendy to be anti-corporate. Corporate America reaches historical lows in public opinion, so it is easy to be nasty making strong assimilations that are morally unacceptable.

However, Prof. Hamel has been a pro-eminent influencer as a teacher and consultant and confident of those people who are today considered so poorly mannered: senior management.
So this would call for a more low profile strategy … particularly when you (and I) know that most of the ideas contained in its latest best seller actually were available here and there well before he published.

Taking such a road is not helpful for everyone.

Finally, the “in a world where customers wake up every morning asking, “what’s new, what’s different and what’s amazing?”” is to be a bit out-dated, particularly in a time where loads of people are unemployed and stuffed by over-consumption. The miracle is gone … that is the reason why companies need to build true and long term relations with customers (as Quality Management teaches) … and why social media is essential.

Now to get back to the essentials, Trust, there is one blind element that no one really addresses in the current crisis: the selfishness of senior management. Back in the 80’s politicians have deregulated the capital market by dis-intermediating it. Before when senior managers wanted to have money, for most of them, it was compulsory to visit bankers. Bankers were lending money at a certain rate, for a certain time, for a certain risk. Bankers are not perfect but they are providing middle / long term visibility. Since deregulation senior managers issue shares of the company they run (and bankers are forced to design junk products to make a living ). By doing so they transform their company in a commodity on a market and they face competition from all other listed companies, including those in more profitable industries. This creates a push toward relentless search for profitability. Either they align or they don’t get money, the shares drop and the company goes havoc. To make sure this does not happen, investors have incentivised senior management to deliver short term and high returns. They have denatured the role of management, that classically is there to secure the long term of corporations. To be successful senior management has set short term evaluation criteria, mostly on individual basis as this is the easiest ones to monitor. Some people buy it, some don’t and withdraw, demotivated by the absence of sense/long term vision. Either way this is the best way to kill collaboration or ‘engagement’, understood as an effective contribution to the company, the collective … This is precisely what social computing tackles, by connecting people and surfacing implicitly (i.e. making ‘publicly available’) their contributions. Smart social computing lets people be selfish (ego) yet deliver positive side effects for the group. As usual Technology is used to solve human and organisational issues. Because this goes against incentives systems and behavioural norms, it is a painful and time-consuming process to make ‘Enterprise 2.0′ happen (to get back to one strong line of the FFWD blog!) as long as we don’t fix the basics I mentioned above.

My 2 cents.
Stay well and enjoy the coming Olympics!

Olivier

Disclaimer: my opinion here about Prof. Hamel’s contribution may well be due to to your selection of quotes

Vikas NarulaJune 12th, 2010 at 11:47 pm

Hi John,

Thanks for this post. Wanted to get your thoughts on the following write-up re: using social network analysis as a method for measuring/visualizing employee engagement.

http://www.keyhubs.com/blog.

Thanks!

Vikas