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What You’ll Discover About Low Employee Engagement:
* How the phrase low employee engagement respects the privilege of power
* Three reasons supervisors are more complicit in low employee engagement than they realize
* Why protecting and supporting high employee engagement is a management responsibility
* And much more.
Host Hanna Hasl-Kelchner
Hanna Hasl-Kelchner is a champion for fairness in the workplace. She helps organizations gain clarity to make more informed decisions by reducing complex concepts into sensible, bite size pieces. Hanna accomplishes this as a business strategist and through her writing, speaking, consulting, and popular syndicated podcast, Business Confidential Now.
Hanna brings a unique perspective to the table, growing up in an entrepreneurial family and running a business before age 30 and blending it with decades practicing business law. Those experiences enabled her to successfully bridge the gap between the two disciplines during her career as a trusted advisor to influential decision makers ranging from startups to the S&P 500, Big Tobacco, and the White House. She has also been on the faculty at two top-ranked MBA programs: The Duke University Fuqua School of Management and the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Leadership and Management episodes.
Contact Hanna and connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Her new book Seeking Fairness at Work is available wherever books are sold starting April 18, 2024.
Part 1: Unveiling the Truth: Workplace Fairness Myths vs Reality
Part 2: The Key to Retaining Top Talent: A Fair Work Environment
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Why Low Employee Engagement is Not an Employee Problem
Whose problem is low employee engagement? Managers tend to blame employees for being unmotivated, making it the employee’s problem. But maybe managers should look in the mirror instead? Let’s talk about that.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner.
Today we’re going to continue with part three of the five part sneak preview of my new book, Seeking Fairness at Work Cracking the New Code of Greater Employee Engagement, Retention, and Satisfaction. If you missed the first two episodes of that series, no worries. I have links to them in the show notes.
And here’s a recap in part one, Unveiling the Truth, I explained how fairness is not an unreasonable expectation. It’s a universal human expectation and value that transcends cultures around the world. As children, we understand it implicitly. When other kids on the playground don’t follow the rules. We are not above calling it out and calling them cheaters. When it gets to be too much, we take our ball home, and in the workplace we’re typically more diplomatic.
We might look the other way for a variety of reasons, but the ability to recognize unfairness or experience it never, ever leaves us. We know it when we see it. In that first episode, we also talked about the implied social contract that exists in the employee employer relationship, and indeed all relationships. How if we’re looking for high levels of collaboration and engagement, it is a huge mistake to treat those relationships as transactional instead of the social beings that they are.
Last week, we dove into the topic of retaining top talent and how fairness plays a pivotal role in that process, and indeed in retaining any of your employees. It had us analyzing the covenants of good faith and fair dealing that are part of any contractual relationship, including the implied social contract that exists in the workplace. I know it sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t.
What a lot of managers don’t realize is that even though they have positional power to set the rules in the workplace, employees still have their own expectations under the implied social contract, expectations of good faith and fair dealing that simply do not go away.
Now, today, I’m going to focus on the concept of low employee engagement. I just love it when managers call declining employee enthusiasm low employee engagement. Describing it in that way really respects the privilege of power by putting the burden on workers to shape up and obey. And if employees aren’t interested in their jobs anymore, well, then it must be their problem.
When framing the situation that way, managers are unfortunately forgetting three very important things one. Employees they’re disappointed didn’t start their jobs as new hires with a low level of engagement. And when you stop and think about it, employees are never more engaged than on their first day at a new job. Everything is shiny and new. They want to make a good impression. They’re on high alert. All right, that’s number one. They start out on a high.
Number two, Gallup research detailed in the book. It’s The Manager finds that immediate supervisors play an outsized role in how employees feel about their employer. And when you think about that, that research makes perfect sense. After all, managers assign the work, they provide direction, they evaluate performance, influence raises, champion promotions, and for all practical purposes, they are the employer for the people they supervise. All right. So number two.
Number three, research also finds that when an employee leaves a job, it’s because they leave their supervisor more than they leave their company.
So when you put it all together, employees join the company on a high level of engagement. Their immediate supervisor plays the biggest role in how they feel about their job and their supervisors are typically the reason they leave their job.
So well, maybe, just maybe, the immediate supervisor is doing something that’s causing employees to be less engaged. Maybe low employee engagement that is blamed on employees is really a reaction to what’s being encountered and navigated in the workplace on a daily basis.
After all, when employees feel they’re not getting what they reasonably deserve, they’ll bring less discretionary effort to their jobs. Will they care? Sure. Just not that much. They’ll obey and conform to keep their jobs, but they’ll rarely go above and beyond under those circumstances because it’s not worth it to them.
Of course, that kind of stalemate creates a real delicate balance, a real tenuous equilibrium that only requires one small disappointment on either side of the desk. To lead to “I quit” or “you’re fired.”
Now, if you’re in a supervisory position, you may be thinking, ”Oh, wait a minute, Hanna. Why is it management’s responsibility to fix this employee problem? Why can’t employees just step up? It sounds like we’re supposed to do a bunch of hand-holding.
You can’t seriously expect me to be responsible for what someone else thinks is fair. All this feeling stuff. Come on. I’m not a therapist.”
I agree you’re not a therapist. And I will bet that your direct reports don’t want you to be one. But how employees feel about whether management is keeping up their end of the implied social contract is very much within the scope of your leadership responsibility.
Good asset stewardship the responsible management of assets left in your care includes safeguarding human capital assets represented by labor. Leadership is the ability to influence others to achieve common goals. But if management’s influence diminishes due to low employee satisfaction or engagement that they have inspired, they have in essence wasted and reduced a valuable asset needed to move the business forward.
I’m going to repeat that because that is so, so key. If management’s influence is diminished because they have reduced employee satisfaction and engagement due to their actions, they have in essence wasted and reduced, a valuable asset needed to move the business forward: labor.
That’s just poor asset stewardship. And frankly, it’s irresponsible. It’s unfair to the organization whose assets are mismanaged, and it’s unfair to the employees whose well-being and ability to perform are mismanaged.
Wishing that problem away because management is in the driver’s seat and can do what it wants, is similar to overlooking a flashing engine light. Things break down when warnings are disregarded. Ignoring how management behavior impacts employees works the same way.
Turning a blind eye when you know or should have known there’s a problem reflects negligence in exercising the duty of care needed to protect the organization’s assets. Some people might even go so far as to call it management malpractice.
If it sounds serious, it’s because it is. You’ve got resources on your payroll you’re not being able to adequately tap because of this situation. So either way, betraying the implied social contract, whether it’s done knowingly or unknowingly, has serious consequences.
Now, I appreciate how placing responsibility for low employee engagement at the feet of management is disheartening, and I also realize how management often doesn’t see or understand, or realize how what they’re doing is discouraging employee engagement. That’s why next week, I’m going to address the five most common things that cause toxicity. So stay tuned.
But in the meantime, thanks so much for listening today. A transcript of this episode can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com. And if you missed part 1 or 2 of this series, those links are included in the show notes.
For a lot more on this topic, including a five part strategy for improving employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction, my new book, Seeking Fairness at Work, will be available starting April 18th, so circle your calendar.
If you found today’s episode thought provoking, please be sure to tell your friends, share a link and leave a positive review. I’ll be back next week with part four. Until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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