Getting your workforce fully engaged and motivated so they give their best
--
The word engagement is something I have started hearing in the last 10-12 years. We didn’t have much of a hype on engagement in the 90s or in the early 2000s. In Unilever, we used to do a Global People survey once every two years, and most of it was pen and paper-based. The results used to take about 3-6 months, and by the time we cascaded and did team discussions, it was almost a year! We did not dissect or discuss the engagement levels of various teams. Attrition was low, across all of Unilever in Asia (except China) so this was not an issue.
Over the last two decades, engagement took on a new meaning, and I tried to learn more about it. In the last decade, engagement has become a buzzword, with lots of different models talking of various hues of engagement. Of late, there is also a move to expand engagement to the much broader employee experience!
I have read about motivation and what motivates people. We have read of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Hertzberg’s two factor theory of motivators and hygiene factors- they made sense and gave me an idea of what motivates people. We also know that managers have a big role in the motivation of their teams- they can make or break it. But this engagement idea was new, and I was curious to understand more about what it really meant and what drove it. I was told that engagement means ‘discretionary effort by employees’, and that it was driven more by ‘emotional engagement’. Every consulting firm had their model of engagement- but I realised that they varied in what and how they measured, but conceptually similar. I read Daniel Pink, and he speaks of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose – the three truths of motivation (1) And Simon Sinek also avers that when people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.
Based on all my understanding over these years, let me try and articulate my views, or rather my model of engagement! But first, we have to understand the context of our workforce and the rapidly changing business environment. We now have a workforce predominantly comprised of millennials and Gen Z. Any model of engagement needs to be well researched keeping this context in mind. Right, let us start with identifying what is engagement. It builds further on the concept of motivation – it is the passion, the involvement, the motivation employees bring to their jobs and the emotional investment they make in the organisations. Engagement brings more of the emotions into play- more than just a cognitive appraisal of what the job or the company offers.
But the paradox is that we still approach ‘engagement’ with a very ‘cognitive’ or rational problem-solving method- that has been my greatest learning, and has been at the root of wherever I have failed to build engagement. So this realisation is coming from some of my failures, and further prompted by some of the new literature on emotions. Therefore, we need to first understand what drives engagement, and then dig into the how of building the emotional connection.
The new model of engagement
There is a lot of new literature now on what drives engagement, especially amongst the current millennial workforce. With my insights of working across a few sectors and my discussions with many practitioners, my model of engagement is based on 5 key pillars.
Great Team and manager | Recognition | Learning and career growth | Psychological safety | Sense of fulfilling a purpose |
Do I enjoy working with this team and manager? Do I like being with them?
| Am I recognised appropriately? Am I rewarded fairly? | Is there challenge in my job? Am I learning in my job? Am I growing?
| Do I feel psychologically safe? Am I able to be authentic and express myself? Do I have reasonable autonomy? | Am I making a meaningful impact? Am I able to achieve my purpose? Is the purpose of the organisation appealing to me?
|
1. Social | 2. Esteem | 3. Personal Growth | 4. Being at your Best | |
At the very base of that is the need to meet our social needs- that’s a primary need. Every employee wants to enjoy working with their team and manager. We are socially geared- so having great colleagues is the first thing that is needed for engagement. Many research, including a latest McKinsey report, confirm the predominant role of managers or bosses in employee satisfaction. That is followed by the need for recognition. Recognition helps generate pride and self-esteem. Building on that is the everyone’s need for personal growth- some interesting challenge in the job, and the consequent learning and growth. Finally, it is about every person being at their best, and to be that, they need an environment where they feel psychological safe, and are able to be authentic and achieve their personal goals and aspirations.
Let us spend some time understanding psychological safety. Research shows that this is indeed a distinguishing feature of great teams. In organisations and teams that are focused on innovation, this could be the most important element that determines effectiveness. Timothy Clark lists out the four steps to psychological safety. At the base is member safety or inclusion safety, where an employee feels accepted as is, for who she or he is. The second level is learner safety, where employees feel safe ask questions, make mistakes and learn. The next stage is contributor safety, where you feel safe to make contribution with your skills and abilities. The final stage is challenger safety where employees feel safe to speak up, and question the status quo when they see an opportunity for improvement. This is a useful guide to think about where your teams are, and the practices you can introduce to increase psychological safety in teams.
So, in summary, this is my framework for thinking about employee engagement- T(Team) R (Recognition) L (Learning), P (Psychological safety) P (Purpose). Is it any different from any others? Probably yes, more focused on things that really make a difference on the ground, more relevant for the future based on latest research. However, we need the right sustainable actions to deliver on these elements. But more importantly, the key is how do we consciously understand emotions that are associated with this and work on them. That’s the difference!
Before we go further, let step back and look at how emotions are important here. We know that true engagement is when there is a greater emotional involvement. More than a rational, cognitive assessment of the above elements, which is important, we also are driven by our emotions. Our decision making is influenced by emotions. So, while we work on delivering the rational elements in the above model, we need to also simultaneously work on generating the relevant emotions- this mix of ‘rational’ and the ‘emotions’ is critical. That is the real insight.
The Emotions lens
Let’s try and understand the specific emotions that are at the root of engagement along these 5 dimensions.
Key element | Concomitant emotions |
Great team and manager | Compassion, gratitude, happiness |
Recognition | Pride, gratitude |
Learning and growth | Pride, gratitude |
Psychological safety | Happiness, gratitude |
Purpose, achieving my goals, | Gratitude, pride |
As you can see there are 4 core emotions at the heart of engagement. Based on the work of David DeSteno, Sonya Lyobomirsky, Martin Seligman and others, here is a quick overview on these emotions.
Compassion: Compassion is an emotion that just goes beyond empathy, and makes people want to help. They understand the emotions of the others, but also are moved to help. This is a crucial emotion needed to build great teams and collaboration across the company. And makes people feel included, enjoy being part of a team.
Pride: There are broadly two types of emotion of pride- pride due to attributions to controllable causes is called ‘authentic pride’, i.e., ‘I succeeded because I put in efforts’, and b) pride due to attributions to stable causes is called ‘hubristic pride’, i.e., ‘I succeeded because of who I am’. The authentic pride is linked to various aspects of resilience, effort, pro-social behaviours, and positive leadership behaviours, whereas ‘hubristic’ pride leads to narcissistic behaviours and interpersonal conflicts.
Gratitude: This is powerful emotion that makes people go the extra mile. We feel grateful if other people have invested in us, and makes us willing to return the favour in future. And gratitude also makes us take a long-term view of things, be less self-centred, and collaborate with others.
Happiness: Literature defines happiness as ‘subjective well-being’. Of late, there is a lot of research on happiness, and what causes it. Happiness leads to more pro social behaviour and more commitment, and is caused by many factors. Helping others, having a sense of gratitude, following your passion and good social connections all help us in happiness.
My insight is that the ‘emotions lens’ is important, and we have quite underemphasised it compared to the rational elements. If we change our perspective to ask- ‘How can I ensure these emotions are present in my teams or employees?’ and start planning actions or routines that bring these emotions among the team, I think we will make a big impact on engagement. So first, this calls for a change of perspective. Think about what emotions you would like to see in your team, and plan for those. But you might ask, can I really plan for certain emotions? Yes of course. Emotions are but our response to any event or stimulus. For instance, if you want to see emotions of gratitude, consider mentoring your team. When they see time invested in their development, that would lead to an emotion of immense gratitude. If we consciously think of creating certain emotions, it is possible, and is actually much more powerful any rational approach to motivating and engaging people.
Trust us to get your leaders to be at their best!
Comments