Page 21 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

8B RE-ENGAGE

: A manager failed to confront a poorly performing worker
who was reducing the effectiveness of the team and causing
good performers to leave. The poor performer was not a bad
person, just someone who was in the wrong job but had come
to realize he could be “willfully useless” without having to
pay a consequence. Yet the problems he created continued
year after year.
: A large consulting firm acquired a small regional firm that
over the years had built a sterling reputation based on deliv-
ering more than clients expected. When representatives from
the acquiring firm came in to address employees of the newly
acquired firm, instead of commending them for the market-
leader reputation they had built, they berated the assembled
managers and staff for “overdelivering” and left a proud team
of professionals feeling devalued, demoralized, and resentful.

These are management sins of both commission and omission.
The result in either case: disengaged employees who must now be re-
engaged . . . or may never be.

: SO, WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?

Here are two definitions:

: “. . . a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an
employee has for his or her job, organization, manager, or
coworkers that, in turn, influences him or her to apply ad-
ditional discretionary effort to his/her work.” 3
: “. . . the extent to which employees commit to something or
someone in their organization and how hard they work and
how long they stay as a result of that commitment.” 4

In terms of observable behavior, engaged employees have been de-
scribed by the following actions: