Page 83 - Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles

54 Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work

of a valid assessment instrument by which to measure employee
engagement. If the assessment is invalid, then conclusions drawn
from the research must be considered suspect.

Just Because You Call It Engagement

Doesn’t Make It Engagement

While writing this book, I contacted several of the largest
consulting firms that claim expertise in the area of employee
engagement. During an interview with one CEO, I shared my
concerns regarding current research methods and asked his
thoughts on defining engagement. He responded, “It is whatever
you define it be.” His answer represents both the exact state of
affairs and the central problem. Dozens of different research-
ers and consultants are defining and measuring supposedly
the same construct using completely different methods. In fact,
MacLeod and Clarke’s study identified more than fifty distinct
definitions. No field of study can advance under these Tower of
Babel conditions.
I am certainly not the first to identify this significant and
widespread methodological problem. In an article published in
2008 in the journal Industrial and Organizational Psychol-
ogy, Drs. William Macey and Benjamin Schneider wrote: “Most
of the engagement measures we have seen failed to get the con-
ceptualization correct. . . . Especially in the world of practice,
we have seen measures of what we have called conditions for
engagement labeled as measures of engagement (Buckingham
& Coffman, 1999), and many measures used for years as indi-
cators of employee opinions relabeled as indicants of employee
engagement.” Just because you call it employee engagement
doesn’t make it employee engagement.