Forget employee engagement

Published on Jul 24, 2017

Every December and January, many of our beloved information sources publish the trends to watch in the new year. If you deal with people, and our industry, they talk about the trends around talent acquisition and management: Great talent is going to be harder and harder to find. Recruiters are going to have to step it up … a lot, since only really smart, savvy, committed recruiters are going to understand what’s needed to woo a smart, savvy, committed candidate. Salaries and the efforts made toward an impressive candidate experience will rise. More companies will banish the annual performance review in favor of ongoing feedback loops. More companies are going to use analytics to tweak incremental bits of performance improvement. Games that test skills will be big. But here’s what needs to happen on a massive scale: Jettison the term “employee engagement.” Or at least use it more appropriately.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Forget employee engagement

Pursue employee immersion 
Photo by D7eame

What's wrong with employee engagement?

For years, we’ve talked about employee engagement,

basing a lot of our understanding on Gallup’s surveys.
Photo by DigitalRalph

By engaged, Gallup means people who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work or workplace.

A recent survey shows that people with a high school education are far more engaged—36 percent—than those with college or advanced degrees.

Photo by gadgetdude

Meanwhile, scientists, doctors, engineers — often the core revenue generators everyone’s fiercely competing for — are much less engaged at
29 percent.

Most of the people who take the time and energy
to pursue a challenging advanced degree program,
who subsequently become the sought after top performers capable of focusing clearly and profitably
on the essence of a difficult problem,
don’t want to merely engage.

Photo by quinn.anya

When it comes to the thing they’ve sought to master, they want to immerse.

Photo by benwerd

They want their attention
to be deeply absorbed
in doing great work.

They want their skills to be put to the test

and pushed to the next level.  
Photo by linus_art

They want to grow.

And they want their efforts to be directed toward something that they believe is meaningful.  

The thing that sets one opportunity apart from another is whether they
can develop
to their fullest, working on something that personally matters
to them.

Photo by kugel

Shay Moser

Haiku Deck Pro User