Hack the Science of Engagement!

Ripe for disruption.
Fatally flawed.
Requires 21st century reboot.

QUESTION 1:
Let’s say you’ve perfected the science of studying lab rats. Hypothetically, let’s say you’ve studied their levels of engagement in running a maze of your design. If you continuously refused to rethink the design of your maze and continuously failed to track what the rats actually gave a rat’s ass about, beyond your maze… Is the perfected science still valid?

QUESTION 2:
If you gave consultants three quarters of a billion dollars every year to advise you and measure how you’re doing on something… (Hypothetically, let’s call that something Employee Engagement) …and year in, year out, the results said you truly sucked at that something (like 13% good, up to 87% not good)… Would the average sane person say that you are taking that thing seriously? Or are you just pissing away the opportunity to do what really needs to be done?

The Future of Work

My team and I just spent the past year studying these not-so-hypothetical questions. We did not set out to call for the disruption of an entire consulting industry’s way of doing business. But that’s where the results led us.

Download the Future of Work Study: 2015–2020,
Making the Future Work

We’ll let Clayton Christensen in HBR address why all consulting needs to be disrupted. In this post, we’ll focus on why engagement desperately needs to be hacked.

The basic problem with employEE engagement is that, at its core, it is employER-centric.

Almost all definitions of “being engaged” are variations of “The extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organizational success, and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplish tasks important to achieve organizational goals.” (Source: 2014 IBM Smarter Workforce Study.)

Who’s the real beneficiary here? Engagement, as it is currently designed, is about the company, not the individual!

And the future of work workforce ain’t buying it.

We asked people workforce-centric questions, like: Can you achieve your dreams and goals where you currently work?

Only 29% said yes. And even that number needs to be adjusted downward to view it properly. Two-thirds of that 29% were either senior execs, entrepreneurs or worked in entrepreneurial environments (e.g., startups). Only 9.8% [33+% of 29%] of line-level workers and mid-managers working in non-startup environments believe they can achieve their dreams and goals where they currently work. No matter how many times companies ask employees if they have a friend at work, or if they know what is expected of them, or if they feel their opinions matter… Engagement will remain outdated and useless in many ways, until it includes issues like: Can I achieve my personal goals and dreams by working at this company?

So Poorly Designed, It’s Dangerous

In science, there’s always control group, and you compare your results with the control’s results.

Who is the current control group for engagement? Other companies. (Company ABC’s engagement scores are compared to Company XYZ’s scores.) Definitely not a workforce-centric design.

To truly care about engagement, and to accurately track it, we need to flip things around. We need to start asking a lot more questions through the workforce’s lens, not their bosses’. The control comparison needs to be reinvented to include a lot more about what they care about, separate from any company — their dreams, their passions, their goals, their priorities…their unique and amazing capabilities that are still not yet baked into corporate ways of doing things.

The World Has Changed: When engagement consultants came up with the currently-vetted set of questions and views of engagement…

• There was still some career security in being someone else’s employee. Now… Ha! What security?

• No one individual could build an entire corporate infrastructure. Now everyone who has a smartphone can do so.

• There were only two options for full-time income… 1. Being someone’s employee, or 2. Being an entrepreneur or free agent (which was too risky or costly for many.) Now, the sharing economy (AirBnB, Lyft, RelayRides, TaskRabbit, etc.) has created limitless ways for people to generate incomes on their own with greatly reduced startup costs and risks.

• Workplace social networks flowed mainly within workplaces. Now, one’s work networks are just as strong outside of work and workplaces.

Engagement as a science and practice needs to be kicked out of the past and dragged into the 21st century.

Call for Galilean Truths,
Galilean Measures

Galileo was considered a heretic for declaring that the sun did NOT revolve around the earth. We need his kind of heresy to bring engagement into the 21st century — designs that acknowledge that companies need to revolve around employee needs, not just the other way around.

Here are some examples of what our study participants told us would be 21st century engagement questions. You will notice that the focus of each question is on the individual, not the company…

STRONGLY AGREE > STRONGLY DISAGREE
The commitments that I am asked to make for the success of the company are aligned with and support my personal passions and purpose.

STRONGLY AGREE > STRONGLY DISAGREE
My company is respectful of my time and attention, and is focused on using it wisely and effectively.

STRONGLY AGREE > STRONGLY DISAGREE
Corporate-built tools and processes are as good as or better than any app or tool I can buy, or build, for my own use.

STRONGLY AGREE > STRONGLY DISAGREE
My manager provides the same quality (or better) support, guidance and resources as my social network.

STRONGLY AGREE > STRONGLY DISAGREE
This company pays all full-time, part-time and vendor teammates a fair and living wage.

These questions* are but a few examples. There are more in our report. But notice what happens when we dare to venture beyond a corporate-centered view…

Many of today’s most-admired and most-engaged companies would score poorly on the last question.

And from our studies, we know that, even in most-engaged companies, up to 88% of employees do not feel that their time (one of their most precious assets) is used wisely or effectively by their employers.

And two of the questions above reflect a new reality for companies — that the best standard for tools, processes and support may be from the workforce’s networked world, not the company’s.

Hacking engagement with Galilean truths and measures gives us a 21st century view of engagement.

* Frankly, what’s also needed are completely different approaches than the standard five-question Likert methodology. As Bryan Kramer says in Human to Human: We need to move away from the unnatural language of business and speak more like humans — more real, with greater empathy and simplicity. Hacking the science of engagement also means learning a lot more from the realness and immediacy of social tools.

Mr. Engagement, Tear Down This Wall!

To be fair: Today’s engagement measures and practices are perfectly fine — as far as they go.

But the 21st century requires a whole lot more workforce-centeredness. In our study, we call for a 50/50 split. 50% as is, corporate-centered. 50% workforce-centered. (With the group that pays the bills, customers, built into both).

Engagement, as we know it, must be disrupted. Big time.

Two Calls for Action…

Dear Disruptive Consultancies, Leaders and Companies: We urgently need you to create and pilot 21st century Galilean approaches — based on Galilean truths, that employees no longer revolve around corporate-centered measures.

Dear Everyone, Especially 20-Somethings: Let your voice be heard! Download our study as a starting point, and then go way beyond it. Debate and refine 21st century views of engagement in social media. Rewrite the damn thing until it meets your needs! Then deluge HR and senior execs with examples of new metrics that, if the company excelled at them, would keep you there. And if you don’t get action within a short timeframe: vote with your feet. Life’s too short.

The time for the current approach to employee engagement is over. The currents costs in squandered workforce capacity, happiness and dreams are too great.

It’s time to hack engagement to bring it into the 21st century.

And to focus it on the hopes and dreams, wants, needs and souls of people who actually do the work.

— Bill Jensen has hacked systems since childhood. Like the time he got his high school Principal’s Office to unknowingly fund Senior Cut Day.
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