Are Your Employees Satisfied AND Engaged in Business and at Work?

In an effort to continue to widen my professional horizons as well as maintain my HR Certifications, I’m sitting in a NYS SHRM conference session on Employee Engagement. No matter how many years of HR experience I have, I always extract new nuggets to enrich my own HR practice from these sessions – e.g., if you stop learning, you’re dead.

As the speaker began the presentation, he emphasized the importance of developing your organization’s definition of employee engagement with its foundation in the organization’s strategic plan and goals. From my perspective, transformation in your organization’s workforce cannot be fully achieved without a clear strategic plan, goals and values.

Speaker then made the distinction between Employee Satisfaction and Employee Engagement:

• Employee Satisfaction is “me-” focused; e.g., the employee’s needs are being met.
• Employee Engagement is “we-” focused; e.g. the employee’s and the organization’s (strategic and workforce) needs are being met.  Moreover, employee engagement cannot be created or forced – employee engagement and energy is a choice made by each employee.

Therefore, to allow such employee engagement choices to be made, your organization’s leadership must create the environment for engagement choices to occur, via Dan Pink’s DRIVE:  Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.  If these elements are not completely present, then engagement cannot occur no matter how much money your employees are paid. 67% of employees today report that they require meaningful (e.g. purpose) work.

Does your organization provide the Autonomy, Master and Purpose to allow all of your employees to be satisfied and engaged in business and at work?