Fully 70% of American workers are not \u201cengaged\u201d with their company\u2019s mission, vision, values, and purpose.\u00a0 They will give their company sufficient effort to stay out of trouble and to continue collecting a paycheck, but that\u2019s about it . . . they\u2019re not going to give their company much, if any, discretionary effort.\u00a0 Dan Pink, a favorite business writer and speaker of ours, talks a lot about employee engagement, but he comes at it from the standpoint of motivation.\u00a0 In other words, he talks about those factors that motivate employees to be engaged with their company\u2019s mission, and dedicated to its success.\u00a0 To learn about the three primary motivators that Pink says lead to engagement, please continue reading below.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmployee Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it’s pretty much the whole game today.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>~ Gary Hamel, business speaker, author, and consultant<\/em><\/p>\n Most of today\u2019s management practices can be traced to the Industrial Revolution when the country was transitioning from an agrarian society to an industrialized one.\u00a0 The objective of those practices was to take folks coming off the farm and organizing them into productive work units so they would do what we wanted done, how we wanted it done, and when we wanted it done.\u00a0 In short, these management practices were (and are) aimed at compliance<\/u><\/em> . . . and that was fine as long as the work being done was relatively simple, short-term, and repetitive.\u00a0 But as our work has evolved into tasks that are more complex, creative, and that unfold over a longer period of time, compliance has become less important while engagement has become more important.<\/p>\n According to Pink, the three primary motivators that lead employees toward engagement are:<\/p>\n We\u2019ll start with Autonomy and spend most of our time talking about it, not because it\u2019s more important than the other two, but because it requires a bit more explanation.<\/p>\n Autonomy<\/u><\/strong> (self-direction)<\/p>\n People crave a level of control over:<\/p>\n If you believe people are fundamentally untrustworthy, lazy, and prone to take shortcuts, you\u2019ll have a difficult time granting them the level of autonomy that would put them on the path toward genuine engagement.\u00a0 But if you believe otherwise, then you should hire good people, pay them fairly, allow them as much self-direction as you possibly can, and then get out of their way.<\/p>\n Purpose<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n People need to know that what they\u2019re doing is important . . . that their work matters, not only to the outside world, but also to the company and to their fellow employees.\u00a0 From time to time, everyone may wonder, \u201cIf I don\u2019t show up for work tomorrow, will anyone notice or care?\u201d\u00a0 No employee should have to seriously dwell on that thought . . . and with regular feedback and proper reinforcement, they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n Mastery<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n When people believe that their work is important and that it matters, they will continuously look for ways to gain mastery over it.\u00a0 They\u2019ll not only look for new skills to add to their arsenal, but they\u2019ll also look for ways to get better at the things they\u2019re already good at.\u00a0 When the company positions itself as a place of learning and encourages everyone to pursue mastery over whatever they do, employees will see that as a sign that the company cares about them as individuals and is willing to invest in their professional development.<\/p>\n In summary, if you want a workforce that enthusiastically contributes discretionary effort in support of the company\u2019s mission and goals, Dan Pink offers a pretty good roadmap for how to do it:<\/p>\n Do those things and employee engagement will be inevitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fully 70% of American workers are not \u201cengaged\u201d with their company\u2019s mission, vision, values, and purpose.\u00a0 They will give their company sufficient effort to stay out of trouble and to continue collecting a paycheck, but that\u2019s about it . . . they\u2019re not going to give their company much, if any, discretionary effort.\u00a0 Dan Pink,<\/p>\n\n
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