Employee engagement is an attitude
Organisations are starting to recognise the importance of engagement. Many studies have pointed out the benefits that engaged employees offer to the organisation. This is confirmed by our own Competence centre study: increase of productivity, lower turnover of staff and absenteeism, better client relationships, more flexibility, innovation and optimisation, to name just a few. The added value of engaged employees is undeniable. And still only half of all organisations invest in an employee engagement policy. The other half appears to be unconvinced…
Just to be the devil's advocate for a moment, I would give the following argument not to invest in employee engagement; you can't engage employees because real engagement has to come from within. It's about intrinsic motivation which is not something you can impose, enforce or conjure up. It is up to employees to decide whether they are engaged or not. It's an attitude.
This attitude is largely inspired by a person's personality of which one could say it cannot be manipulated or changed, or at the very least not for always. More specifically this means you don't try to increase or develop the engagement of employees, but that you – if you really want an engaged employee population – simply hire naturally engaged employees. It's that's simple.
Employee engagement contains similar properties to entrepreneurship; the drive to set up businesses based on good, new ideas whereby engagement needs to be seen in a company context. However, compared to our neighbouring countries we are 'less' entrepreneurial. Last year we asked employees whether they could see themselves in a full-time self-employed occupation. 72% of respondents answered 'certainly not', 24% was in doubt. Our engagement study showed that only 17% of an average organisation is engaged. The labour market is certainly not littered with naturally engaged and enterprising employees. Hiring or finding them is not an easy feat.
That's the task an organisation faces. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. In most cases people are not engaged or unengaged their entire life; there are moments when we feel passion, in flow with what we do, 'feel like it' and enjoy it and want to go for it. But the circumstances need to be right. Organisations can do something about this. We can influence the culture and work environment and impassion employees as long as we make an effort to get to know them and find out what their passions and ambitions are. Note: this is not a once-off investment an organisation needs to make but a continuous, never-ending commitment. A temporary increase in engagement is a bonus of course and at best engagement can be increased over a long(er) period. The aim, naturally, is lasting change, where we touch people in their 'being' and create a new attitude.
The benefits are huge, not just for the organisation and its clients, but also for the employees, who see their market value go up, enjoy their work more and understand the point of doing a good job. But above all, this new attitude is also an added value for the labour market; we need entrepreneurship, people who take the initiative and go for it, who are flexible, multi-employable and of course productive and innovative. A systematic investment in employee engagement therefore has a positive effect on the quality of our working population. If we want to make a difference as a knowledge-based economy, we need to work on the right attitude.
