Employee engagement is a very trendy topic. I am frequently in conversations with leaders in both Human Resources and/or functional team leaders who are trying to “solve the problem of engagement.” The odd thing I find however, is they are ready to schedule a meeting or launch an employee engagement initiative without analyzing a few key factors that will help them understand what direction to take.
One thing I’ve learned is that employee engagement is not an initiative, nor is it a project. These labels suggest that there is a start and finish to the effort required to establish and sustain employee engagement. I’m usually called in once leaders believe the problem of employee engagement has manifested. They suggest that their people are disengaged as evidenced by low productivity, little progress against goals, and the observation that people lack enthusiasm for their work. When I encounter this, leaders tend to want a quick fix to ensure employees are engaged and happy—to improve survey results.
At this stage we don’t want to launch an initiative with a clever marketing campaign. Instead, we need to answer a few tough business questions such as:
- How do you define engagement?
- What specific behaviors would you be able to observe to know that employees are engaged?
- What have you tried in the past to increase engagement? What was the outcome of that effort?
- How do you differentiate engagement from accountability?
According to David MacLeod, Founder of Engage for Success, engagement is about “how we create the conditions where employees offer more of their capability and potential.” You can find the MacLeod report HERE.
This is very different from accountability which is focused on how people are evaluated and for what. It takes into account expectations and the quantifiable work outputs the employee is responsible for delivering, to whom, and how often.
Armed with the answers to the questions above we are ready for the next stage—and it’s still not time to plan the initiative. We need to further diagnose whether we are dealing with a challenge in engagement or accountability.
Here are several more questions I ask to accomplish this:
- Have you set and communicated expectations?
- Can each team member articulate them the same way that you would? How do you know?
- Are the team members aligned with the strategic plan? How do you know?
- Do your team members meet expectations and are their deliverables on time, most of the time?
- If the answer to the above is “No,” I ask,
- What have you tried in the past to increase accountability as you envision it? What was the outcome of that effort?
I’ve found that managing in an environment of punitive accountability leads to disengaged employees and conversely, when employees are managed in an environment of positive accountability, they are more engaged.
Here are several ideas to help you function in an environment of positive accountability:
- Make work visible. Use a visual management system or posted operational plan so prioritized work, and progress in that work, is easily seen.
- Conduct weekly accountability reviews with the entire team to know their progress
- Embrace a “no shame, no blame” approach to accountability. That means that you shift from asking “Why wasn’t that accomplished?” to a series of other questions:
- What were you planning to accomplish last week?
- To what extent were you able to accomplish it?
- What got in your way?
- How can I or the team help?
If you are struggling to increase accountability, we’d love to talk with you.