4 Misconceptions About Employee Engagement in the Minds of CEOs

According to you, Generation Z is the only one to blame, isn't it? A comfortable generation that thinks they are entitled to everything, that puts me first and poisons the workplace. I can almost hear you saying, "We are going to give these people a medal for coming to work on time!".

If they are not happy here, they should find another job, don't you think? After all, in such bad economic conditions, there are hundreds of young people out there who would love to replace them.

This is one of the primary problems of the developing world; that is, what should be tolerated and what should not be tolerated in the workplace is determined by the upbringing and worldview of the managers. This leads to a lot of perceptions and misconceptions about what is right and what is wrong. At this point, please allow me to evaluate the most important misconceptions about employee engagement that are floating around due to managers' perceptions;

1) Employee Engagement is a kind of fringe benefit (FALSE)

Recently, some companies have been sharing information in various media that employee engagement results are on the rise as per the trend. You should know that engagement is not a marketing tool to attract new hires, nor is it a substitute for employee bonuses. Engagement is primarily about people's core motivations. The experience your company offers may be good or bad, or good in some areas and bad in others. But the real issue is how much of this process is in line with the employee's own motivation to do their job. Sometimes, even if you offer a very good experience, the employee may not be engaged because the experience you offer is not in line with their core motivations. On the other hand, even if you don't provide a good experience, sometimes the nature of the person's work can make them engaged. So stop thinking of engagement as a fringe benefit that you offer them. Think of engagement as a fundamental outcome of many variables.

2) Employee Engagement is not cheap, it is a high-level option (FALSE)

My first car was an old Opel Corsa. It wasn't in the best condition, but it was the best I could afford at the time because I had just started working. Or so it seemed to me at the time. In two years it cost me a lot of money and I replaced a lot of parts, and I finally realized that if I had bought a newer car in the first place, I would have actually spent the same amount of money as I did on this old car, and I would have spent less time in service.

It is good to be cost conscious. You can do this in two ways: either by spending less money up front or by investing in something that will save you money in the long run. Which one you choose for your employees depends on your business model. If you have a business model where your employees change very quickly and you don't see much benefit in keeping them, you may not be willing to invest in engagement.

Yet, when you factor in the invisible costs associated with each lost employee, the harsh reality hits us in the face and reminds us that most companies don't have that "luxury". On the other hand, even if frequent employee turnover is not a big problem for you, organizations have a moral responsibility to create a good working environment. In other words, creating a good working environment to build employee engagement is not a luxury you offer to employees, but a basic rule of treating people like people. This has nothing to do with culture, but with universal rights and principles that are recognized around the world.

You may think that by spending time and effort and money on employee engagement, you are not going to please anyone in the end. Sometimes you may also think that maybe we should do something about it, who wouldn't want to have employees working longer hours for less pay? All of this is a shopping approach because it is based on the idea of investing in something and getting back more than you put in. However, what we call commitment is not a contractual situation (an equation between what you get and what you give) like "employee satisfaction". Engagement is about finding and creating meaning. What you really need to do for this is not some benefits to make your employees feel good temporarily.

What do I mean? Let's take an example. Two companies need a new employee. Both have an equally fun office. One offers 10000 TL per month and expects to work 40 hours a week. The other offers 9000 TL and requires 55 hours a week because the second job is related to an infrastructure project that will bring water to millions of children who don't have access to clean water. Would you be willing to work for less money to do something more meaningful? I can hear many of you saying yes. That's why "Teachers", "Social Workers" and "Mothers" get paid very little and do their work in a committed way. Maybe you should stop throwing benefits and money around and start investing in people being engaged. At some point, a Culture of Engagement becomes like muscle memory and becomes self-perpetuating. You don't need to spend a lot of money to keep this culture going (sometimes you don't even need to spend any money at all), you just need to support people to find meaning in their work.

3) Employee engagementis only for those in cushy jobs (FALSE)

Is your industry, your business or the work your employees do too burdensome to deal with the issue of engagement? Are the long hours, dangerous working conditions or a poor work environment creating a workplace that has become more about a survival mentality than engagement? For an answer, I spoke to a friend of mine who worked in the Peace Corps for two years. What she told me really described the difficult conditions; Have you ever been attacked by a snake when you went for a walk because you couldn't sleep because of the heat? Has your wife been stung to death by a scorpion in the tent where you stayed overnight? Have you ever been attacked by terrorists at work? Have you been stranded in the desert without food or water? Have you ever had to lock yourself in isolation because armed militias wanted to kidnap your students? And because these isolations happened so often, did you have to know the isolation procedures very well?

The point here is not to get into a competition of "whose job is harder?", in which case my friend would win. Instead, I want to show that there can be commitment even in such extreme situations. "I can't say that every day was joyful, but I can definitely say that I loved my job," my friend told me. "There were wonderful moments when a student taught me a song in his own language while we watched the sunset, or joyful moments when we stopped a corrupt civil servant from misbehaving. But there was also a general sense of accomplishment that was not limited to a specific moment but came from the challenge." Commitment is possible in any working situation, because it is not just about the environment, but about the people in it. In fact, engagement is even more critical when the work environment is dangerous, difficult or exhausting, because otherwise what other motivation is there to keep employees there? That's why the last point is so important...

4) Engagement is not a skill that can be learned (FALSE)

Let's play the Deserted Island game. You are sent to an island in the middle of the ocean with 50 other people. What skills can you bring to the table that will make you valuable to the people you are stranded with? Medical knowledge? Maybe you're an engineer and you're going to help build an aqueduct? I'm a consultant specializing in employee engagement, so I'd probably be the first one to be cooked for dinner.

In real or hypothetical terms, if it comes to survival, many would say that employee engagement is not a priority investment. That's not to say that engagement isn't useful, but as I said before, engagement has a reputation of being a fringe benefit and a soft management tactic, or something that companies with more money than sense can afford to give resources to. So there's a tendency for employee engagement training to be seen as a luxury, isn't there? But let's stop there for a minute.

One of the quickest wins for businesses is to correct this misconception. The fact that it's a skill that you can train is actually a strength of employee engagement because it means: EVERYONE CAN IMPROVE IN THIS! We've seen it hundreds of times, so we know it's true. And the best part is that every investment in employee engagement will pay dividends. And I'm not talking about putting a ping pong table in the break room.

Instead of thinking of employee engagement as something flashy, it's important to think of it as a fundamental element that will unlock the full potential of your company. Employee engagement is, at its most basic level, life becoming more fulfilling. It is not a waste of time, but rather a more efficient use of time. Engagement is a natural human condition and therefore not specific to a certain type of person or to certain jobs.

You know those days when you can't wait to get out of bed and go to work?

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT TRAINING CATALOG