Nurturing Employee Commitment and Engagement

Board members, like top executives, are not involved in day to day operations. Their responsibilities involve the largest picture, floating high above the lower and middle levels of the organization, seeing forests but not trees. But it is critical that board members learn why employee’s feelings are so important and they need to gain agreement among all the stakeholders- management, employees and shareholders - that achieving high levels of employee enthusiasm and involvement is everyone’s responsibility and a high priority. In an increasingly harsh economic reality, all of an organization’s stakeholders need to direct their competitive energies externally, against the competition while they collaborate within the organization.

Individual companies can nurture employee commitment and engagement and restore people’s confidence and optimism if they do the following:

1. Levels of employee engagement and commitment are measured annually using some of the available standardized questionnaires and a sample of free-flowing interviews with employees at all levels.

2. An organizational policy of “conditional commitment” is instituted. This means that as long as an employee’s performance is excellent, their skills and knowledge are cutting-edge, their contributions are needed, and the organization can afford to pay them, they have a job.

3. Hire and promote people into management who are emotionally intelligent and can create significant relationships between themselves and their employees involving mutual respect, trust and reciprocal mentoring.Inspire and recognize leadership in all ranks with a commitment to shaping “average” people into successful and confident performers.

4. Strengthen the bond between employees and the organization by customizing employees working arrangements and rewards.

5. Hire and retain people who are a “best fit” between what an organization can offer and

what an employee requires because that will lead to greater success for both the

organization and each employee.

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What can managers do to increase people’s commitment to the organization?

• Only 11 percent of workers who rated their boss’s performance “excellent” – which means they liked and respected their boss – were likely to look for a new job in the next year, but
• 40 percent of those who rated their boss’s performance “poor” said they were likely to jump ship.

As the Gallup Organization says, "People join organizations but they leave their bosses."

Subordinates have always known they had to earn their boss’s respect and it was important for the boss to like them. The new wrinkle is, bosses have to earn the respect and liking of the people they lead and manage.

When asked what their job is, most managers say, “It’s to hit the numbers.” That’s true. But the only way to reach the unit’s goals is through the performance of every subordinate. Thus the manager’s real job is to manage subordinates, to lead, teach, model and involve the people who report to him or her. It’s all about relationships.

The best relationships between bosses and subordinates involve mutual and reciprocal trust and respect akin to that between a teacher and an able student. These relationships can be friendly, but they’re not friendships in the usual sense of the word. Friends don't judge each other, but a boss must make judgments about performance and abilities.

Good relationships are always based on trust because in the absence of trust, there is mistrust and a real relationship is impossible. Gaining trust requires genuine communication. A great manager needs to be true to their word, and ensure that communication is both comfortable and basically honest.

Machiavelli is not a good role model for managers.

Managers can enable employees to feel they and their work matter if they talk with each employee as an individual, as a person who might need, for example, different kinds of recognition, or different working arrangements or a different career path. When managers engage these issues with employees and really listen to what the employee is saying, they have made a difference in how positively the employee feels about themselves – and the organization and their boss.

Gifted managers communicate their belief that each individual is important, that much is expected from each, that everyone can master new tasks and earn significant recognition and many can become leaders.

Most of the time, these optimistic beliefs are self-fulfilling…

Why should Managers and Executives pay attention to non-engaged employees and the psychological recession?

What people do is largely determined by how they feel. Too many people are being affected by the widespread Psychological Recession, which is the depressed and anxious feeling that the present is no good and the future will be even more catastrophic. Making it worse, people feel like they're hanging off a limb in a cold wind and no one, not their government or their employer cares. To a large extent, these feelings stem from employees' feelings that they are no longer stakeholders in the companies they work for, with the predictable result that anxiety and stress dominate the workplace and people leave even if their body shows up.

The American Management Association conducted a survey of companies that had reduced payroll, and reported that only 45 percent of those companies had profited from those actions even within the first year. In sharp contrast, the share price of organizations in which employees feel their employer really cares about them, and employees reciprocate with a powerful desire to do their best, are two to three times higher than those of a comparison group and profits are higher by 30 percent. This is really common sense: it’s What goes around comes around, and the Golden Rule, Treat others as you would want to be treated. When we respect and like our boss and feel we’re respected and liked in return, we work harder and smarter. Then, the odds are really good that the company is a success.

In other words, except when red ink is really flowing, which is most of the time, drastic cuts in jobs, benefits, training and pensions are a fool’s game. It is, in fact, cutting off your nose to spite your face. How dumb is that?!

This is just the beginning of an open forum for ideas, thoughts, questions and much more. I hope we'll create a really interesting and worthwhile dialogue with lots of people participating.