The Happy Curmudgeon

A colleague asked me where one could find criticisms of Employee Engagement, the buzzterm championed by marketplace monster, Gallup. There’s tons of stuff about it pushing it and making it appear to be as vital and important as…well, let’s see, Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, Employee Empowerment, and on and on.

There is very little PUBLICLY available on the Internet that asks the critical questions one should ask of any “movement” in the workplace.

• Is this new in any way? Or a repackaging of what we already know?
• Does it add to our understanding of workplace behavior and is it actionable?
• Is it a better way of conceptualizing the workplace than what else is out there?
• Is the relationship of the concept sufficiently explored so that we understand the links to other key concepts that co-exist, modify or otherwise interact with the concept?
• What is the quality of the research?

That’s not to say there is NO discussion of these important issues. The problem is, however, that it’s not easily accessible. As is usually the case, buzzy madfads succeed because they “win” in the public arenas due to marketing and communication clout, and NOT because they have been studiously researched and verified. Such is the case with employee engagement. To get  a real sense of the research and discussions, beyond the superficial, you have to closet yourself in a library of facility that has research journals.

You cannot rely on the Internet to get in depth information about this, or most topics. Neither does the popular media deal with these issues.

So, What About The Questions Above?

Ah. Well, here’s the thing. This is being written on the Internet. Do you want to read a 75 page analysis of the problems with employee engagement? Ah. Well, Nobody is paying me to write one, so all is good. Seriously.

Research Issue: Almost all of the Gallup information, and the “research” supporting the value of Employee Engagement comes from survey data. There are two problems. Survey data about work issues has questionable validity due to a number of research issues. As an example, there is research that shows that if you ask people about their values, and then examine whether their behavior is consistent with those values, there is a huge gap. They don’t match up. People say many things about their own internal states and feelings (my favorite is that money doesn’t motivate), but these statements are either horribly oversimplied (as is the situation with money as a motivator), are subject to wanting to “look good” in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of others, and are suspect simply because many people — all people do not have objective access to their own feelings, beliefs and motivations.

This is simply a fact of life with any survey data, and the more the surveys ask about intangible inner states, beliefs and values, the less validity they tend to exhibit when matched to behavioral criteria of validation. Since employee engagement is largely based on survey data, that’s a huge issue.

The second research issue is that of causation. Over and over we hear people suggest that employee engagement leads to positive (fill in the blank — productivity, customer service..). But how do you establish that in the real world. YES, correlations exist. But what causes what? It’s reasonable to suggest that high productivity (as a result of working in an efficient “shop” will impact a person’s response on an employee engagement survey? Indeed, yes. We simply do NOT know about causation, although many people simply don’t grasp the implications.

Occam’s Razor:

In science, it’s accepted the the simplest (most parsimonious) explanation of something is more desirable. There are good reasons for this dictum that I’ll not explain at the moment (you can look it up), but Employee Engagement is NOT a parsimonious explanation of workplace behavior. It adds an additional explanatory layer to the mix, so rather than saying: Leadership communication –> Higher employee productivity (a measurable output of relevance), the new, non parsimonious pattern is:

Leadership communication –> higher employee engagement –> higher employee productivity

(this is somewhat simplified).

Employee engagement fails miserably on the Occam’s Razor test. It increases complexity and adds no explanatory power that is superior to what we already know, or believe.

The Reification Problem

Reification involves treating an abstract conceptual explanation (a construct) as something that actually exists. Employee Engagement doesn’t “exist”. You can’t touch it, see it directly. It only exists in our minds as a means of explaining (for better or worse), behavior in the workplace. This is a basic element of research and science, and one that social science researchers, even expert ones, get confused by. As an explanatory construct, it’s only raison d’etre is that it explains things better than any other explanation. Does Employee Engagement do that? No.

Is It New, Better?

Is there something new here? No. What we have is an umbrella term that could easily be replaced by previous terms that are well established. Employee commitment is good. Employee loyalty. No doubt there are dozens of other ones including behavioral measures that give us more parsimonious linkages between organizational behavior and employee behavior (e.g. communicating regularly –> less criticism of corporate policy — note these can be operationalized and measured directly without the need to invoke other constructs)

The Saving Grace

There’s much more to be said, but some others will have to say it. However, here’s the interesting thing. While Employee Engagement is a poor construct, adds very little if anything to our previous understanding of organizational behavior, is relatively unexplored at a deep level, etc — in short, it’s junk science — it may have a positive outcome, as do other fads.

The huge Gallup publicity muscle (and that of others) have taken a term with very little real value and created the perception that it is valuable. It’s marketing. But, the result is that people focus on important things like leadership, trust, productivity, etc in the workplace, and that’s a good thing. When people, particularly leaders and managers THINK about what is going on, that’s a good thing, and Employee Engagement, like TQM, and other fads, stimulates thinking albeit in a sloppy sometimes ineffective way.

Mind you, that positive outcome has nothing to do with the construct itself, but all to do with the ability of the sponsoring agencies to create buzz, and to bring it into the consciousness of consumers/customers. Any term…any concept with face validity can be made credible, even popular.

Concluding Remarks:

Almost all of the comments above could be made about any fad, or “thing” that is popular. It’s a function of the popularization of everything, such that FIRST, things are accepted and embraced and preached about, and THEN, after there has been significant acceptance, research and sober thought occurs, which if you are wondering is awfully backwards and inefficient. Take a look at social networking, or e-learning, or any of the fads that hit education and you find the same thing. A heavy sponsorship, adoption, then evaluation, and fallbacks.

There’s tons of interesting questions generally about why we as a society or professional group act so irrationally and backwards, and there ARE answers to why fads occur, and why the seem to happen in areas populated by very smart people. But we’ll leave that for the moment. But you have to wonder whether more critical thought before bandwagon jumping could save millions of dollars collectively. Well, I do.

Got a comment? Give it up. I ain’t tootin on this blog without more encouragement.

And remember kiddies, that employee engagement doesn’t exist. It’s an explanatory construct!