Employee Engagement is Contagious

Employee Engagement is contagious and new research suggests that managers can be its "ground zero" - its initiators.

Managers are the sergeants of organizations. As a manager, you ultimately have a strong influence on how engaged your organization will be. You are at the forefront of a company's culture. For most employees, you are the company (or at least you represent the organization as they see it). So if you get the feeling that your team is not engaged, you might want to look in the mirror.

Engagement is, after all, a viral, contagious phenomenon. Yes, viral marketing, like viral memes on social networks, the word is everywhere, sometimes overused. But it makes more sense when talking about an organization, a living organism where every employee is a kind of cell. Ideas, emotions and attitudes spread within an organization in the same way that viruses spread from cell to cell in the body.

The Influence of a Manager

As a manager, you have a lot of influence over this process. More than the orders you give or the memos you write, it is your own level of engagement - what you say and do - that can help create an employee experience where people choose to be engaged or cynical and apathetic. You are the ground forces on the battlefield, and your performance as a leader can have a far greater impact on engagement in your organization than the dictates of the C-suite. After all, if you give your all, your team will follow suit.

Employee engagement research by our partner DecisionWise showed us something interesting: Employee engagement is often not directly related to a manager's own engagement. Statistical analysis (linear regression) found that a manager's engagement (whether high or low) accounts for about 5% of their employees' engagement. In other words, just because a manager is engaged does not mean that their employees will be engaged. However, when we did additional analysis (Chi-squared), we found that Fully Engaged managers had a 50% higher than expected level of Fully Engaged employees, while the proportion of Not Fully Engaged employees was half as low as expected. Similarly, the opposite trend was shown for managers who were not themselves engaged (i.e. the expected level of Engaged employees halved and the expected level of Not Engaged doubled). So, even if an engaged manager does not necessarily mean an engaged employee, engaged managers are much more likely to behave in ways that create an environment where their employees can choose to be engaged in their work. Simply being engaged is not the real key to a manager's success; it is WHAT a manager does as a result of their own engagement that will ultimately impact the employee experience.

How Do You Spread Engagement?

Obviously, a manager's engagement is critical (and even viral), but it's not as simple as hoping that your engagement will be passed on to someone else like a cold. Your employees want to be engaged and will respond to a leader who finds and embodies what we call the "MAGIC of Engagement" (Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact and Belonging) in their work. Commitment is a natural default setting of the vast majority of people. That is, we naturally desire commitment. Do you want proof? I bet you didn't come to work today thinking, "I hope today is a bad day!" It is human nature to want to be engaged.

What is a manager's role in engagement? Research conducted by our partner DecisionWise while writing Engagement MAGIC: Five Keys to Engaging Individuals, Leaders and Organizations, published in January 2019, revealed six common things good managers do to build engaged teams:

1. They are Personally Engaged. These executives don't just preach engagement, they live it. They are engaged as individuals and as leaders. They put their hearts, souls, minds and hands into their work. Now that is contagious.
2. They Have a Participatory Approach. "Management by Exclusion" is a common practice. This means that the only time a subordinate interacts with their leader is when they do something good or take a really important step. Engaged leaders, on the other hand, are there with their people on a daily basis. They take everyone's temperature, they learn what people need to inspire them, what they need to inspire them to strive on their own.
3. They Hire Wisely. You may not have complete discretion in hiring someone for your team or department. But you probably have influence. Engaged managers do their best to ensure that new hires are people who are likely to participate in the organization's employee engagement experience.
4. They Bring M-A-G-I-C. These managers understand that Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact and Belonging are the components of engagement and don't try to replace what really matters with artificial satisfaction factors. They understand and accurately assess the employee experience and take action to create an environment that enables their employees to choose engagement.
5. They Don't Interfere with Work. When your team is fully engaged, sometimes all you need to do is get out of the way and just sometimes adjust the sails. Knowing when to push people and when to hold back is a sign of how great and committed a leader a manager is.
6. They Lead by Leading by Example. Above all, the role of an engaged manager is to lead by example. These managers lead by example with their every behavior. As Gandhi said;

"Be the change you want to see in the world."