So, you know that I love to read newspapers, although I’m about to cancel my subscription to the Indianapolis Star.  You should never be able to read a newspaper in the time it takes Ann Curry to read the news headlines on the Today Show.

However, I really enjoy the Financial Times.  The paper, as you can tell by the title, tends to concentrate on financial issues, but the fact that it is not U.S.-based provides significantly less bias than watching MSNBC or Fox (thank goodness).  It’s also “salmon” colored.  I’m not sure why that matters, but it is fun to look at.

Anyways…

In the Business Life section of yesterday’s paper, Stefan Stern writes about How to engage a workforce that is fearing the most. I was most struck by two of his paragraphs:

“Employee engagement is a venerable management theme.  It has long been seen as a magic ingredient for corporate success.  Build an engaged workforce, the gurus tell us, and all will be well. 

But today you have to ask: engaged with what (or with whom)?  Employers are trying to disengage themselves from significant parts of their workforce.  Contracts - both physical and psychological - are being torn up.  The engagement is off.  Is there anything managers can do to reinstate it?” 

Wow… I’m gonna have fun with this one, with all due-respect to Mr. Stern.

First, as one of those “gurus” (at least in my own mind), I’ve never told a client that employee engagement is a magic ingredient any more than customer satisfaction is.  It’s a tool to get a company closer to their financial goals.  Surely Mr. Stern can’t be denying the accepted link between employees, customers, and the bottom line… can he?  I’m sure he is aware of the famous Sears Study that proved a 5 percent increase in employee satisfaction created a 1.3 percent increase in customer satisfaction that drove a .5 percent increase in same store revenue.  Or data from Gallup, Sibson, Great Places to Work Institute, the Conference Board, or even my own cute little company, Employee Hold’em.

Trust me, if it were magic, I could charge a heck of a lot more for the consulting I do.  Perhaps Mr. Stern believes the golden rule is magic too.  And again, I never tell anyone “all will be well”.  Business is about incremental improvements.  If you ever think business is “well”, you’ll wind up looking down a really big hole in a very short time.

Mr. Stern’s second comment,  “Employers are trying to disengage themselves from significant parts of their workforce”.  Aw, c’mon.  You can’t use the same word (engage) and go back and forth between meanings to make a point.  Although a fabulous writer trick that I use often myself, it’s unfair to the spirit of the article.  Employers aren’t trying to disengage from their workforce, they are making the decision to get rid of them, help them graduate out the door… FIRE ‘EM.  Remember the title of my blog site… Fire Fast, Hire Slow.

In fact, employers know that after a layoff and after telling the true reasons for the decision to the remaining workers, engagement becomes a bigger priority, one may be so bold as to call it a “necessity”.  Perhaps even the venerable Mr. Stern would at least put it in the column of “necessary evils”.  And he knows the importance of this open honest communication, or at least one of his friends does.

“We stated it as it was.  You have to get people to face up to the reality.  People will follow you… what they can’t stand is unrealistic, deluded leadership.  When we said that the situation was very bad, that we were in survival mode, we got three cheers from the front line”.

And what was Mr. Norman doing?  He was re-engaging his workforce, increasing their affective commitment to his organization.  Not by throwing money at them, but by treated them as he himself would want to be treated.