Page 26 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

Employee Engagement C13

It is certainly true that picking the right people in the first place
goes a long way toward creating an engaged workplace. But as sin-
cere as the executive’s question was, it is really the wrong question.
We know what was behind her query: if she could just find people
who are, by nature, motivated, energetic, and enthusiastic, then she
could largely solve the engagement, retention, and customer service
problems at her company. Although it is true that you can use pre-
employment assessments to learn about the general motivation of an
individual, just because the person has that innate drive does not mean
he or she will be motivated or engaged at your workplace.
Some employees are naturally more engaged than others. One em-
ployee engagement researcher (Crant) has rightly pointed out that there
are two dimensions of employee engagement behavior: personal and
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situational. The personal dimension entails the individual’s natural
predisposition to have a good work ethic, energy, and enthusiasm—
in other words, to be self-engaging. The situational dimension cov-
ers all factors and conditions within the workplace, such as culture
and management practices, that enhance—or reduce—the employee’s
desire to sustain that engaged behavior. It is the situational dimension
that, except for Chapter 10 on self-engagement, will be the focus of
this book.

Employee Engagement: Clearly a Two-Way Street
Employee engagement is created and sustained partly by the employee and
partly by the employer. Hiring more engaged employees will raise the
overall level of employee engagement in your team or organization,
but it will not be enough to reach peak levels of employee engage-
ment. If the executive mentioned earlier were to start hiring more
naturally self-motivated and enthusiastic employees, and the company
did not provide the right leadership, her turnover problem might well
get worse. Perhaps there exists a small minority of employees who will
stay fully engaged regardless of poor leadership and other negative
situational factors, but we cannot recall meeting any. You may have
heard it said that “sharp knives are harder to handle than dull ones”—