Page 28 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

Employee Engagement C15

in his work. Two of Jason’s peers had reported that Jason had been
spending lots of time browsing the Internet. Charlene herself had ob-
served Jason returning late from lunch and playing Internet games.
She believed that Barry, a former coworker and friend of Jason, had
been a negative influence on him. Barry had been in the habit of
spending time on the phone making personal calls, playing games on
the Internet, and taking long breaks and lunches with Jason.
Charlene knew she had to confront Jason about his behavior. She
sat down with him, told him what she had observed, and described
the negative impact it was having on coworkers. Jason at first pro-
fessed not to care, but he finally admitted he was bored in his job. He
agreed to change his behavior. In the meantime, Charlene told him
she would try to find him a more challenging assignment. After tak-
ing stock of some unmet needs in the call center, Charlene assigned
Jason to a “quality trending” role where the center was experiencing
significant challenges. Jason expressed confidence that he could do
the new job well. As things turned out, he blossomed in the new posi-
tion. Monitoring results, creating new worksheets and handouts, and
coming up with new ideas were strengths that had lain dormant in his
previous role. Jason had been re-engaged.
Charlene reflected with pride and satisfaction on her successful
intervention:

I just let him know he could step outside the previous negative im-
pression he had created. I had seen that he had strong case knowledge
and liked to come up with new ideas. He got so much recognition in
his new assignment that he later posted for a training position and is
doing an outstanding job. Many employees don’t get esteem-building
in their personal lives, so they are starved for encouragement. We
team leaders get so caught up in our tasks sometimes, we can forget to
focus on our people.

Who was the prime mover in this story? Clearly, it was Charlene,
the manager. As we have asserted, both employees and managers are
responsible for self-engagement. But there is a key difference that is