No leader is intentionally creating a disengaged workforce. Neither is any employee wanting to work in disengaged mode. But ‘disengaged workforce’ is real & significant enough which cannot be ignored without serious consequences. Moreover, it’s not isolated reality in handful of organizations, it is widespread. Findings from several broad-based popular employee surveys (Gallups etc) shout loud enough that significant proportions of employees are disengaged.
One would wonder when it is neither the intention nor beneficial to either of the parties (leaders & employees), why the engagement levels are unacceptably low? Ironically, the levels of engagement have not shown much improvement despite conscious efforts from leaders & human resource management function for decades. Why is making an employee feel connected & passionate about their work so hard?
Many organizations began to argue, are we chasing wrong object or pampering & spoiling the workforce in the bargain?
Either because of such doubts or being tired of chasing this difficult goal or because of other initiatives demanding their financial attention, many organizations have been observed to put the topic on back-burner or continued with half-hearted rigor. However, the organizations soon experienced the effects in many ways such as lack of initiative, interest & motivation, rising employee complaints, increasing attrition, resulting in chaos in operations & falling CSAT (Customer SATisfaction) scores etc.
Leaders cannot ignore the fact that one cannot satisfy customers without engaged employees.
To have employee who feel connected & passionate, fully committed to organization and does not hesitate to put discretionary effort while doing their job are the essential bed rock for building a business that results in profitable growth.
It is therefore imperative to find out what is making it hard? What are we doing that is resulting in disengaged employee that is contrary to what we want? What is the source of employee disengagement?
Let me peel some layers of inner working & practices of many contemporary organizations to expose how, surprisingly, the actions of leaders are causing disengagement while they have been working relentlessly to increase engagement. Or at least claiming to be.
- Do you agree that the level of connection an employee feels with the organization is a result of his/her overall perception created while working for the organization? I do.
- The perception is in turn an accumulation of a multitude of experiences collected during numerous workplace interactions, prevalent practices & conditions (culture) that the employee undergoes. This could include interactions with bosses, with peers, with top leaders, with other teams, with other functions.
- If we go deeper, these workplace interactions & practices are all occurring within the framework of policies, structure, strategy, systems & processes which are designed by the leadership of the organization.
So far so good. From here on there are two ways in which the situation turns awry.
- Firstly, many organizational systems, policies & practices lose relevance over time, but they are left unchallenged by the leadership. A PRACTICE by leadership (or lack of it) that causes discontent, grows into distrust and disengagement amongst the workforce.
- Second & more prevalent is that the systems & policies which are although relevant, but something goes wrong in their PRACTICE or APPLICATION as it percolates through the layers of the organization. Let me elaborate, many such systems, policies are not understood or wrongly understood by the various managerial layers or misinterpreted. These managerial layers when act under such wrong understanding or assumptions distort the practices while applying. A phenomenon akin to Chinese whisper is at play here. Inconsistent PRACTICE of leadership across the layers.
Below are some of the glaring examples in numerous contemporary organizations indicating the leadership practices (or lack of it) are the real reasons for employee disengagement.
- One of the crucial processes which directly and significantly impact employee engagement is the ‘Performance Management process. Though crucial, this process is the most ridiculed process for its various characteristics, opaqueness, randomness, unfairness, one-sidedness, chore, routine, etc. Practices continued by organizations over years without any improvement have created an abysmally low level of trust among employees.
- Another very prevalent practice, in my view highly impactful causing employee disengagement, is reflected aptly in the popular quote ‘Good people don’t leave their companies, they leave their managers. Managers are often seen to be lacking leadership thus their behaviors (hesitating to address difficult issues, being irrational, authoritative, not listening) annoy their subordinates & they begin to lose trust. Due to such irrational, unfair, and unreasonable behaviors, the employee gets frustrated and good ones even leave. In most companies, the hierarchies are so thick & opaque that top leaders do not notice these or don’t want to. This is one way of functioning of the organization where leaders convey indirectly that we care about meeting short-term goals, not how employees are being led.
- This one is prominent in the new-age knowledge industry where people are considered billable units. In most IT companies, people’s personal desires, interests in specific technology or skill area have no consideration while assigning people to projects. People are sold as billable units forcing them to completely re-skill themselves afresh from project to project. Though serving short-term organization requirements, after a couple of years people completely lose their sense of what their core skill set is. How does one expect to stay connected & passionate about the job when you do it is not the area, he/she is going to be in a few months’ time?
- One oft-seen practice of leadership is not sharing information (transparency). Leaders operate with fears that they think when people leave, most of them go to the competition, and then they will carry all the information. Because of this belief, they withhold information and do not display transparency. By this very action, leaders are indirectly telling their employees that they do not trust them. Destroying trust by not being transparent.
- Leaders need to critically see every one of their actions in mirror to figure out what causes employee disengagement. There are innumerable more practices that I can highlight which are causing employee to feel disconnected, not trusted & disengaged.
- Let me list one last one which I have seen very recently. As soon as the businesses started closing due to Covid-19, leaders in many businesses started laying off employees and announced pay-cuts. How about this, during crisis the first thing they have done is to cut-off the employees. How do you expect to gain leadership trust for such actions? How do such leaders expect engaged & fully committed employees?
