OK, I thought Indy was hot for the 17 straight days of 90+ temperature we recently had.  I was wrong.

Welcome to Austin!  Austin in August.  Temperatures as high as the humidity.  Ice cream from Whole Market melts before we walk four blocks, turning our raspberry frozen concoction into red soup (still fabulous by the way)…  However I am here for a speech at the Austin HRMA conference and I am lucky enough to be here with my lovely bride of 22 years (our anniversary is tomorrow).  I often equate the work my company does on behalf of employees and employers with being married:

My goal at this late stage in our marriage is to keep my lovely bride from being “Unengaged”, being halfway out the door putting relationships at risk.  Remember, 36% of all employees are Unengaged, according to our last national benchmark study on employee engagement.  Half of all marriages end up in divorce, sounds like a valid comparison.

On the other hand, some employees (and spouses) are trapped in their position.  Employees, because they don’t feel they have the skills to find another job, don’t think there are other jobs available for them, or are trapped with golden handcuffs… How many spouses are in the same place, staying because of feelings of obligation, staying because they feel they have to, not because they want to.  Everyone would agree that “retention” is there, but how hard is the spouse going to work to make the marriage work.  On the flip side, how hard will employees work when they feel they have no other choice but to stay, being Reluctant to work hard and reluctant to leave.

Why do I work hard on the relationship with my wife, why should employers work hard for their employees?  We want our relationships to be based on engagement, a combination of attitudes and behaviors.  We want “stakeholders” to do things that benefit ourselves and our families, just like business owners want the same from their employees.  In both business and personal life, you can do bad things to good people to get them to act in certain ways. Ask my 15 year old, he has just started to read Machiavelli’s “The Prince“.  Machiavelli indicated that it is best to be both feared and loved, however, if one cannot be both it is better to be feared than loved.” 

Too many of today’s managers think the same thing.  So do too many of today’s spouses.  Scary on both counts.