Engaged Employees
I appeciated an article in the New York Times this week, written by two researchers – one from the Harvard Business School – that reviewed a number of pieces of research and survey results about employee engagement and happiness at work. They found that employees who are more engaged – happier, but also participating actively in their work – made a difference in their employer’s bottom line. We in the employee assistance field have long pushed the idea that happier employees are more productive and good for business, but this article points out that happiness can be associated in particular with a high level of engagement in their work. In one study, employees were asked to keep a diary that recorded notable events in their workday:
“In one-third of the 12,000 diary entries, the diarist was unhappy, unmotivated or both. In fact, workers often expressed frustration, disdain or disgust. Our research shows that inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier.”
The authors found that some of he aspects of our current work environment – such as “leaner teams,” tighter schedules, and pressure to be more productive – adversely impacts morale. But they add that it is not that hard to improve morale – it simply involves letting employees feel that their work is making a significant contribution:
“As long as workers experience their labor as meaningful, progress is often followed by joy and excitement about the work.”
This points to a basic truth about the meaning of work in human life. As Alfred Adler recognized, work (like love and freindship) is a basic means for human beings to feel significant. They need to feel like they have a unique place, an important role, and a way to make a contribution. The contribution may not always be a new idea or invention. It may be a good weld, a debugged computer program, or a satisfied customer. The important thing is that is has meaning and gives a feeling of engagement with the task, and accomplishment when it is complete.
Our current economic and political environment devalues work by making it a commodity. Worse yet, it is seen only as a cost. When that is the view of work held by managers and executives, and when the goal becomes getting the most production at the least cost (often by outsourcing), the result is a smaller and less engaged workforce – for those lucky enough to still have a job.
Adler’s view would support the idea that workers are participants in the economy. Their labor is part of a cycle of human talent and the contribution of effort, in which value is added to society and we all benefit in large and small ways. My concern about the bubble that led to the collapse of the economy in 2007 was that less and less value was being added to society by the growth that the economy was displaying. I felt misgivings that it was a “house of cards.” Money was being made with money, without the addition of any true value to society. Money originated as a representation of human value. We pay each other for value received. Financial derivatives and inflated housing values were not represenbtative of any added value to society. Many predicted that this bubble could not be sustained, and of course it collapsed. But we seem not to have learned the proper lesson from the collapse. We still think that growth is just about prices, and not about value. It’s no wonder that people feel disengaged.
Adding insult to injury, the members of our society – in their role of “consumers” – are made to bear the responsibility for keeping the economy healthy by their purchases. We’re told that 70 percent of our economy depends on consumer spending. In order to live up to that expectation, consumers are supposed to have what is labeled as “confidence.”
My first thought in response to that belief is that “confidence” is where we get the word “con.” And many people, whose retirement funds lost half their value and are just now clawing their way back on a bumpy road, feel “conned.”
Whatever success President Obama has with his “Jobs Plan,” we need to keep in mind that our well-being as a society does not depend on simply the number of jobs, the size of the government, or measures of “consumer confidence.” It depends on all of us feeling engaged in the life of our community, our nation, and our world. Workers need to feel that they have a stake in what goes on in the economy, and that they are something more than earning and spending machines – or worse yet, commodities that can be taken off the market and out of circulaton whenever their employers find cheaper ways to make money without their labors.
Engaged Employees by Fitzgerald Counseling is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.