Maybe the Traditional Approach to Engagement is All Wrong? Part II
Yesterday, we had a great discussion about the notion that companies should focus their time and resources on engaging their leaders first. Why? The facts suggest that the traditional method of focusing on engaging the entire employee population has failed to yield either the desired or expected results.
If we are going to challenge the traditional methods of creating an engaged workforce, then why not also focus energy and resources on actively disengaged and poor performing employees. Why should we focus our attention here?Every organization has between 11 – 16 percent of their workforce that can classified as poor performing employees. Many recent surveys indicate that as many as a quarter of employees can be actively disengaged. These are the employees, who for whatever reason behave as though coming to work is a fate worse than death. These are the workers that tend to spread discontent. They pull down productivity, increase churn and darken the mood and morale of everyone around them. In fact, many organizations have compared these workers to a cancer that spreads throughout the entire workplace.
We would argue that these workers are a barrier to achieving an engaged workforce. Why? Employees want these negative, bad apples dealt with. In fact, not dealing with these employees is having a direct impact on an organization’s ability to retain and engage their workforce. A failure to deal with these individual is perceived as unfair to the great majority of employees who consistently work hard at their jobs.Effective performance management is the foundation of employee engagement. It drives accountability and demonstrates to everyone that the organization lives by its espoused values. In fact, few things are more disengaging to an employee population than a leader who fails to effectively deal with an actively disengaged employee or a poor performer.
So what can a company do to ensure that they don’t alienate their best employees by failing to deal with their most challenging ones?
- Give managers the help they need to manage the disengaged and poor performers. Almost one-third of managers are regarded as lacking the ability to manage poor performers. “Managers find it easy to manage top-performing employees but are not so adept when it comes to improving poorer performers. Some of the greatest opportunities for improved organizational performance lie in helping managers raise the bar for moderate and poorer performers but it appears from our study that few employers are doing a good job of this.” Watson Wyatt
- Deal with the problem immediately. Managers need to move quickly to deal with these employees because the negativity of just one individual is pervasive and destructive and can quickly spread.
- Get to the root cause. To address the issue, the employer must understand the root cause. Is it a lack of skills, poor work attitude, inability to learn new tasks, or personal problems?
- Put a plan in place and communicate clearly. Managers must communicate clear and precise performance expectations and standards. Review the employee’s current level of productivity and performance in relation to the established goals and develop a plan to help them improve.
- Follow-up frequently. Establish a specific improvement period and follow-up. Management needs either to help employees understand they must pull their own weight and coach them to improve, or let them go.
- Give timely feedback. Provide frequent, timely and relevant feedback to ensure underperformers are kept on track.
- Hold leaders accountable. An organization must be willing to hold leaders accountable for dealing with individuals who affect performance, morale or employee engagement.
So remember, as you are building a plan to increase engagement - “A company’s failure to deal effectively with its few workers who are consistently disengaged or poor performers may decrease the extent to which other employees are engaged in their jobs and their companies.”
Let us know your thoughts.
Comments
You say about disengaged workers:
"These are the workers that tend to spread discontent. They pull down productivity, increase churn and darken the mood and morale of everyone around them. In fact, many organizations have compared these workers to a cancer that spreads throughout the entire workplace. "
I hadn't read this post yet before posting my previous comment. Again, you could say that engagement or disengagement is contagious. According to Christakis:
"Happiness spreads in networks. If your friend's friend becomes happy, it ripples through the network and can make you happy. We see clusters of happy and unhappy individuals in the social network like blinking lights in this complex fabric that is made up of people where some people are happy and some people are unhappy and there is a kind of gray zone between them."
Do you know of a business book that provides data and or useful anecdotes about this in a business context? I have a feeling there's a very strong link between happiness and engagement in general, so I can't believe this hasn't been documented in a business context.
Read more on Christakis here:
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/christakis08/christakis08_index.html
Posted by: Meryn Stol | June 6, 2008 03:45 AM