The concept of Employee Engagement has been a big deal since around the turn of the century, when studies done by several reputable sources showed a clear correlation between higher levels of Engagement and such critical business metrics as profitability, productivity, and—one that’s especially important to HR professionals—employee retention rates.
A lot of things have to happen to achieve such results, beginning with an understanding of the definition of Engagement upon which that research was based: “the extent to which employees invest incremental effort and energy while on the job.”
You also won’t reach your Engagement goals unless employees feel Empowered, which is to say unless they have “a feeling of safety while exercising judgment on the job.”
Employees aren’t likely to feel terribly empowered unless an organization is characterized by a strong sense of Trust, or “confident expectation.” Do people know what is expected of them? If their efforts, however well intentioned, fall short of those expectations, will the conversations with their bosses sound like this: “Things didn’t go as planned. Any thoughts about what we might do differently so they’ll go better next time?” Or will people—not to put too fine a point on things—have their faces ripped off?
Which bring us to the concept that I would contend is the key to it all: Respect.
The most direct thing you can do to drive Engagement levels higher is to get people hyper-focused on manifesting, to quote the estimable Ms. Franklin, R-E-S-P-E-C-T toward one another.
Since I’ve cited definitions of Engagement, Empowerment, and Trust, I owe you one for Respect: “Giving due consideration to the other.”
Let’s take that one piece at a time.
The notion of “the other” is a loaded one these days: But I’m not talking about in-groups vs. out-groups or demographic categories. By “the other,” I mean, simply, “anybody who isn’t you.”
Respect, therefore, means: Did you stop to consider how what you did or said—or didn’t do or didn’t say—affected the other person?
Most people nod their heads at this point. We know that Respect is a certified big thing. In practice, however, it can be very easy to speak and act without due consideration to the other. And nothing torpedoes Engagement as fast as disrespect.
An Example of Respect—Actually, Its Absence—In Action
Suppose you received the following email from your boss: NOT what I was looking for!!!!
No further explanation or context. Just those six words and four exclamation points, all bold-faced and italicized.
What would you do?
Well, if you had a good working relationship, you might walk down to his office, stand in the doorway, hold the email up between your thumb and forefinger, and say: “Having a bad day, are we?” At which point he might say, sheepishly, “Yeah. Sorry.”
You might then have a brief discussion to determine why your email had come up short. He’d say that he’d wanted you to include the latex sales to Vandelay Industries. You’d realize that all you now had to do was copy-paste part of a document that you had stored in the Penske File,1 and that would be it. Crisis averted. Case closed. (In case you missed it, the references to Vandelay Industries and the Penske Files are an Easter Egg to fans of Seinfeld.)
But now let’s consider a scenario where the working relationship with your boss is less than hunky-dory, so it would not be the most propitious time to engage in some soulful sharing with him.
You decide to spend the rest of the day taking another cut at things. Your staff meeting is scheduled from 1-4:00. You send out a calendar revision to your staff, moving the meeting to the following afternoon. Your calendar now cleared, you dig in on cut-two for your boss, sending it to him before leaving for home, and keeping your phone close at hand through the evening. Sure enough, an email from your boss arrives at 9:43 PM.
“No!” it begins. Not a good sign. But at least this time it was not in all caps, bold-faced, and italicized, and there was just one exclamation point instead of four. Fortunately, there was more to the message: “Weren’t we going to include the latex sales to Vandelay Industries?”
It hits you—the Penske File! You fire up your laptop, copy-paste the relevant section, and send it off to your boss. You get up the next morning, and—yup, there it is, in your in-box: “Thanks.” Crisis resolved. Case closed.
The Cost of Disrespect
Had your boss taken a beat before firing off his “NOT what I was looking for!!!!” email, imagine the amount of chaos that could have been avoided. Had he included that additional bit of information about the latex sales to Vandelay Industries, you wouldn’t have had to cancel your staff meeting, the members of your staff wouldn’t have had to re-jigger their calendars, nor would the ripple effects of those re-jiggering’s propagated throughout the organization, causing second- and third-order levels of chaos.
In other words, your boss hadn’t given you due consideration before blowing off steam at his keyboard, i.e., he had been disrespectful to you, and the business paid a price. Multiply this incident times the dozens—hundreds? thousands?—of like encounters that occur throughout a given day in an organization, and those costs add up.
What do you suppose that this sort of incident does to Trust, the extent to which you know what to expect from your boss’s behavior? If Trust goes down, can Empowerment be far behind? And by that point, Engagement is way over the horizon, a dream at best.
A simple heuristic:
Respect begets Trust. Trust Begets Empowerment. Empowerment begets Engagement.
Why start with Respect? Because it’s the one thing over which every individual has complete control. They don’t need a budget. They don’t need approval. They just have to do it. To the extent that more people do, in fact, do it, you will find your path to higher levels of Employee Engagement a much smoother and more fulfilling one.
The Mirror Test
I recommend “The Mirror Test” to any HR leader hoping to keep respect top of mind. Here’s how to implement it:
- Next to the door/exit of each person’s workspace, hang a mirror.
- Before leaving each day, have everyone:
- Look into the mirror.
- Ask themself this question: “In doing my job today, did I give due consideration to ‘the other’?”
- Record their answer.
- Go home; on the way, ponder how they could have turned a “no” into a “yes” when they’re on the job the next day.
And you might even suggest that they listen to Aretha during their commute for inspiration.
John Guaspari helps leaders take on the challenge of being more effective at attending to “the intangibles,” with a special focus on the topic of Employee Engagement.
He is the author of the new book, “If Engagement is the What, Then Respect is the How: Hard-Learned Lessons from Dealing with Those Pesky Intangibles, a.k.a., “The Soft Stuff”” (Fairways Publications), upon which this article is based. John is also the author of seven other books, including the best-selling “I Know It When I See It: A Modern Fable About Quality.” Learn more about John at https://www.johnguaspari.com.