Causes of Employee Disengagement
Employee disengagement is a particularly hot topic right now. The reason is simply – the old practice of people staying in the same job all their lives is extinct. Managers and organizations can no longer afford to have unengaged team members in their organizations. Quite simply – if an employee is not engaged in their role at work, they will leave to pursue a more suitable work environment. Clearly, any employee retention strategy must address the reasons why employee engagement is low in a particular organization.
The cost of low employee engagement are obvious.
Careful what we measure here… The low employee engagement problem has historically been linked to managers being “mean” or insensitive to employees. We concur. Yet we believe there isn't enough research to tell the whole story… We agree the problem may well be the manager not treating the employee the way the employee would like to be treated.
Yet there is another “side of the coin” – the employee’s responsibility. The “road” truly travels both ways. Gallup has done a good job of highlighting this problem, but more research needs to be done.
Through deductive reasoning… One must ask the question… “Why are managers not treating employees the way they would like to be treated?” The answers are in the following problem areas.
When you have the wrong employee in a position, employee performance will undoubtedly suffer. The “knee jerk” reaction will be for the manager to address this “problem”. The manager will have no choice but to hold the employee accountable for their responsibilities. After all this is her or her role in the organization. This is not a pleasant experience for the employee nor the manager. The result will always be lower employee engagement. When a manager does not understand what inspires and motivates a particular employee, they will “push the wrong buttons” and undoubtedly cause employee frustration. The old adage of treat others the way you would like to be treated is absolutely not true! A personality profile can help “bridge the gap” between the needs of the employee and the understanding of the manager.
The solutions to the employee engagement problem follow…
Create a job benchmark. When you benchmark the job, you can then “fit” the right employee into the role by comparing that employee’s personality profile to the needs of the job.
Have every employee and job candidate complete a personality profile. If you don’t have a thorough understanding of how your employees and candidates want to be treated, then the manager will not have a fair opportunity to emotionally connect with their subordinates.
Help managers to understand their subordinates at a deeper level than they do now and hold them accountable for leveraging this knowledge and insight.
Bottom line: employee engagement matter. However, any efforts to better engage your employees will be fruitless if they simply are not fit for the job. By improving employee selection and only hiring candidates who are well fit for the position you will greatly improve the effectiveness of your employee engagement efforts.
Now go Maximize Possibility!
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Chris Young helps organizations Maximize Possibility through talent management, cultural transformation, and strategic intervention. Bring Chris in today!
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