The 3 "A's" of Employee Engagement

Posted to HR.com by Wally Hauck, president, Optimum Leadership; www.wallyhauck.com

Employee-engagement levels have the attention of many C-Suite executives. The latest research by Towers Watson, a human-resources consulting firm, confirms that employee engagement is a critical element for high levels of financial and operational results.

Any executive who doesn’t pay attention to employee engagement might be accused incompetence and/or malpractice. This is especially true in light of the Towers Watson research, which shows that a mere 35 percent of employees are “highly engaged.”

We need improvement. Here are three good ideas that will help.

Anxiety

Anxiety often is considered a negative force (emotion) that causes stress and stagnation. Positive anxiety, on the other hand, is the urgent emotional need to act before an opportunity is lost. Positive anxiety proves useful for learning and development. A balance between the challenge a person experiences performing a task and the skills he uses to perform those tasks will generate positive anxiety. This positive anxiety is required for engagement and necessary for learning.

Unfortunately, feeling comfortable (or satisfied) usually does not create development. Neither does negative stress. But, the stress most employees feel today is negative and caused by pressure to perform using threats or bribes. Pay-for-performance policies or performance-appraisal ratings are substituted for the required positive stress and results in a reduction in engagement.

Positive anxiety is intrinsic (internal), self-imposed and naturally healthy. People can use positive anxiety to make positive change. A great example of positive anxiety in practice is seen in the process of learning speed reading. Many speed-reading teaching techniques require the student to push themselves to reading speeds five or even 10 times faster than their normal pace. This push creates positive anxiety and trains the eyes and the brain to adapt to a much higher speed. The push creates positive change even though during this push the student feels anxiety.

It not only is permissible for leaders to create positive anxiety in the work environment for employees, it is their obligation. Leaders have the most influence over the messages that come from the work environment.

Autonomy

The second “A” is for autonomy—the freedom to determine actions and decisions. Autonomy is a higher standard than just empowerment. Empowerment gives power to someone, and suggests that there must be an authorization by management to perform a task or responsibility. Autonomy is about freedom for self-government or self-management. With autonomy the employee decides when and how to act to solve a problem—no authorization by management required.

Autonomy is best provided when employees understand the principles under which they can make decisions on their own. This does not mean specific processes or detailed steps are missing.

Toyota, for example, establishes four principles employees must follow to work toward improvement in their plants.

• All handoffs between internal suppliers and internal customers must have clear steps in a specific sequence and these steps are defined by the customer.

• Every supplier-to-customer handoff must be direct and unambiguous.

• The path for these handoffs must be simple and direct.

• Improvements can be made by anyone at any time as long as those changes are done using the scientific method. This final principle is the most influential for allowing employees to demonstrate autonomy.