Employee engagement in difficult times

“Work engagement is a mental state in which a person performing a work activity is fully immersed in the activity, feeling full of energy and enthusiasm about the work.” - Strategic and proactive approaches to work engagement, Arnold B. Bakker 
​https://www.isonderhouden.nl/doc/pdf/arnoldbakker/articles/articles_arnold_bakker_445.pdf

Can the employee engagement be raised when the company is undergoing significant cuts? The first reply I got from another HR professional was “That’s impossible. You cannot expect to engage the employees when the company doesn’t meet their basic need of job safety. You can only implement a crisis scenario and pray for the best.”

I don’t agree. You can engage your employees when the company is struggling, but certain conditions must be met.

First and most important, and I learnt this the hard way, is that the internal HR function will have a tremendous task if they want to do it alone, for the simple reason they are inside the storm, and equally affected by it. If the employees feel insecure, disrespected, dejected and over-tired, be sure the HR is feeling the same, if not more because they have access to a lot more information than the others. In conclusion, bring external help. It might feel a little bit awkward at the beginning, but they can also bring a breath of fresh and objective air and inject some optimism in the troops.

Second, be ready to listen and implement changes based on what the people need. There are a lot of things a manager cannot offer their employees in a struggling company, like the insurance that their job is secure, or a higher salary, or a bonus for that project they worked so hard on. Contrary to how they might feel though, they can offer a lot of other significant things. Things that count towards building engagement.

You, as a manager, must find out what the people really need. What counts for them. And you need to go deeper than the money and the job security. You will tell me that there is nothing besides the money, all the employees are motivated is the money. I beg to differ. Some people appreciate their ideas to be considered, to be implemented, some to get recognition and respect from their peers and direct managers. Other people appreciate to be able to conceptualize in silence while their colleagues thrive to have challenges and overcome obstacles, to be in competitions. For a lot of persons, being in a close-knit, family like environment, where everybody likes each other and where they can share their personal lives, is essential for their well-being. And for some, it is paramount to be able to use their sense of humor, to feel like they have fun in the office, to laugh and play.

You must remember, if you are a manager and want to raise the engagement of your team, and your company is passing through a rough period, you might be affected too. Your spirits might be low, and there is a possibility you feel disengaged also. Here comes the outside help, to support you on your journey. Your task? To keep an open mind, and be willing to persevere in your goal, even when the sky is downcast, and the storm is upon you.
Let’s presume that, with the help of your outside help, you found out what your team appreciates besides money. It is important to consider the size of your team, and to split it up in smaller groups (4-5 people / group), each with a Champion responsible to building the engagement of their unit. Offer them relative autonomy to nurture themselves internally, teach them how to build trust and respect within themselves, not relying so much on outside recognition, and act genuinely and equally with all of them.

We will use an imaginary unit, with imaginary needs, for the sake of example: we have Rhonda, who would like to have more knowledge about the projects that are not directly related to her, and maybe to have an input on them too, and to receive recognition on her professional expertise. We have Michelle, who gets bored easily and always challenges the others into not-work related bets. There is Daniel, who needs to have everything organized in a specific workflow and hates not following procedures. Close to his desk is Mat, who likes to talk loudly, deviate from any set course of action just to “get things moving”, and cracks jokes at the most inconvenient moments. Finally, there is Lilly, who loves to listen to everybody else about their families and hobbies and love interests, nurtures all with cookies and a good word, and is over sensitive. All of them present signs of dis-engagement, either getting sucked up in anything else rather than work, or grumbling continuously about the quantity, the difficulty, or the unfairness of it all, or just being disruptive, sulking or sad.

Now, let’s imagine that each person of the five above gets one week to raise the spirits of the others. This exercise is based on trust. All of them need to know what counts for the others, and to acknowledge their differences and not critique the others’ specific preferences.

There are many things that can be done for all them, by each of the others, to offer a token of something significant. Be it information, asking openly for their opinion or help and recognizing their contribution afterwards, or a challenge on how accurate and fast a project can be done, with a flashy card as a prize, or a new procedure on how everybody can do something more efficiently, or a get together after work with music and dancing involved, and even bringing the “significant others” together so everybody can meet and greet.

Working in some companies, people might forget to relate to their inner needs, and just move forward, more depersonalized by the day, until they can find no deeper meaning to what they do. What if we were responsible for a week of meeting others’ psychological needs, besides the work tasks, and we would know that our needs will be met also in return? Scary thought? Inconceivable idea? Useless time loss? A. Bakker states in his article mentioned above: “employees may be proactive and take the initiative to personally change their own work environment. This proactive behavior is called “job crafting”, and may take the form of increasing one’s challenges at work and increasing one’s job resources. Through job crafting, employees can start a gain cycle of feeling well and doing well”.

When you are a manager, and your team is on a downward spiral in efficiency and accuracy, and their disengagement is apparent in their every mistake, backtalk, eye-roll, and your hands are apparently tied, why not try something different? Worst case scenario, you’ll end up with a team with a much deeper understanding about each other. And a bit happier. Because as Kevin Claypool was stating in his 2017 dissertation Happiness in the Workplace Affects Employee Engagement that Leads to Organizational Success: “the results of this study show, happiness in the work place is directly related to employee engagement. This means that the happier employees are at work, the higher the likelihood they will be engaged with the company.”                                        https://search.proquest.com/openview/1784978578eb2171d435388f4494333b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y