Talk to an HR professional and they will tell you how if they had more engaged employees the workplace would be happier. Is that true? I used to think employee engagement was like a magic whip until I realized that employees have evolved. Employee experience was once effective but not anymore
I invite you to come on a journey with me where I will show you how times have changed and why employee engagement is not the solution to your modern day happiness equation:
Organizations have always assumed that people need to work there. After all, you have expenses, bills to pay, a family to look after, and things you want to buy. The organization has a job it can offer you to help you take care of those things so it’s clearly a good fit. This has been the traditional relationship between employer and employee, and organizations have always had all the control and the power. This is the simple equivalent of purchasing a physical good. Oftentimes these same organizations are simply able to rely on their brand power to attract and retain talent. We called this the utility phase
Productivity: Managers literally used stopwatches to time how long it would take employees to complete a task to shave off a few seconds here and there. It was analogous to trying to get a sprinter or swimmer to improve his or her lap time. All of this was designed to improve productivity and output while emphasizing repeatable processes, such as the famous factory assembly line.
Engagement: The tenets of employee engagement are corporate culture programs, office redesigns, team building, and well-being strategies. Unfortunately these things make the organization look better but have little impact on how it actually performs. Employee engagement is good but a short-term fix. Employees need more in this day and age. Actually employers hate employee engagement because it never takes into consideration the needs of the Organization
Employee experience: This is an intersection between Employee expectations, needs and wants , and, an Organization’s design of employee expectations, needs and wants. “Yes you want to work from home and have all the perks but I demand an equal amount of responsibility and results from you”, says your employer. When we have the intersection, both the employee and employee will take interest.
As you can see, engagement is selfish-focusing only on the employee, experience focuses on both parties. Employee engagement is overrated, Employee experience is a wholesome solution.
That’s my take. What is yours? Let me know.
