Setting the Table for Employee Engagement

When I talk to my industry peers, often at industry lunches or dinners, it’s clear that we are all trying to achieve amazing success for our companies through people. We spend our careers trying to understand what motivates people and drives discretionary effort. What makes people more innovative, more productive and happy? We all have our own theories based on experience, research, as well as our own and others’ perceived successes and failures.

Engagement is often one of these topics that come up between appetizers and dessert. As I consider engagement in the workforce, there are two themes that resonate deeply for me – one is around common purpose, the other is around mastery.

Common Purpose When it comes to engagement, I am always drawn back to Peter Drucker’s idea of common purpose – doing good for our business and the world.

Throughout his work, Drucker called for a healthy balance between short-term needs and long-term sustainability; between profitability and other obligations; between the specific mission of individual organizations and the common good; between freedom and responsibility.

People are genuinely interested in engaging with companies who want to positively change the world, either as employees or consumers. This is why I strongly believe being good global citizens and neighbors drives engagement more than we give credit. There is something about going side-by side with a colleague as you paint a house, dig up weeds, haul trash, sweat, pack food, coach a local sports team or do anything that is fundamental to human subsistence that brings you closer together. It makes you try a little harder after the weekend to build a better product, smile a bit more and just appreciate those around you.

Mastery and Autonomy Daniel Pink speaks of purpose, mastery and autonomy as drivers of career engagement. On mastery, getting better is the ultimate. Leap frogging or even incremental improvement after years of in-depth practice is an exhilarating experience. Looking for ways of triggering that muscle in your workforce is another tool to drive engagement. If the environment presents challenges that are “just right” (a.k.a. the Goldilocks Principle), then who knows what innovation will emerge? For autonomy, people generally want control over what they do, when and where. The modern-day workforce is moving in that direction with principles around telecommuting, self-managed teams, holocracy and a greater focus on results.

I look forward to my next CHRO roundtable breakfast, lunch or dinner, as emerging workforce trends will continue to stimulate discussions and drive new human resources practices, guidelines and programs. I always gain insights from my peers, and know we are in this together, setting the table for our people’s collective success.