A rich debate blossomed overnight in a long string of comments to a recent blog post by CV Harquail where she lays out “three reasons why employee engagement is a scam.”
Here reasons are:
- It focuses on the individual only as an employee and not as a whole person.
- It seeks to get more discretionary effort from staff without giving a lot back.
- What the engaged employee contributes to his employer can’t be taken with him when he leaves.
If your employee chooses to give extra effort and creativity to her job, is she really getting the short straw in the relationship? That depends on whether you think the following outcomes that highly engaged employees typically seek are a fair exchange for added contribution to the enterprise: challenging/interesting work/more say in how your work gets done/career development and learning opportunities/a collegial work experience/opportunity to make a difference/opportunity to experience yourself frequently in a “flow” situation (aka “in the zone”).
I happen to think these are worth a lot, thank you very much. If you adopt an internal strategy of getting more of your employees to move into the “fully engaged” column, you can do it only if you inquire about and attend to your employees’ needs, especially the higher order needs contained in the above list. Engagement occurs when the employee is fairly compensated for his performance AND experiences some of these outcomes.
You still have to have the basics of performance rewards in place. It’s when you try to engineer good feelings without paying for the work done that an employee engagement strategy becomes a scam.
© 2010, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.
About Ian Cook
Ian is an experienced presenter, group facilitator and executive coach. Through his keynote presentations, highly interactive workshops, and custom-designed team-building practice, he helps his clients leverage their investment in their managers and teams. 
