Comments on: Employee Engagement – The Mad Fad of the 2000′s – A Poor Construct

By: Claire Smyth

Claire Smyth — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:07:03 +0000

I agree entirely with what Penny has to say, because bascially I am in the same boat.

“I run a small business, but I know that the more engaged my employees are the better the output in most cases is the quality of work I get.”

To me it just makes common sense

Claire

By: Nardia

Nardia — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:17:28 +0000

Penny, I totally agree with you as I also run a small business and I don’t make an effort to measure any output but I do put the effort in to hire employees that are going to be very engaged in their work and like what they do.

When I interview people, as I have been in sales for decades I have a good sense of who is being fluffy and who really likes their line of work. So I get rid of the issue on none engaging employees from before they start on day 1.

Just my two cents.

By: Penny

Penny — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:25:28 +0000

Robert you said:

“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.

I run a small business, definitely not a large corporation, but I know that the more engaged my employees are the better the output – the quality of work I get.. How do I measure it? I don’t really – but I don’t need to. I make a concerted effort to ensure all employees are engaged in my business..

By: Milan Davidovic

Milan Davidovic — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:14:14 +0000

“What we have is an umbrella term that could easily be replaced by previous terms that are well established.”

Right — this is the sort of thing I’m curious about. What were people talking about (and what terms were they using) just before someone started talking about “engagement”? What was the context? And what was the initial response to “engagement”?

Perhaps I missed my true calling as an historian, archaelogist, or some such…

By: Milan Davidovic

Milan Davidovic — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:15:23 +0000

Well, one of the things I’d like to find is the point at which the term “employee engagement” came into use. Did someone bundle a bunch of ideas together under this term? Was there another term that was thrown over for this one? What actually happened?

After that, I’d like to see how others in the field responded to the new notion, and to walk forward with it from there to understand current thinking.

By: Robert Bacal

Robert Bacal — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:06:21 +0000

Gallup’s Bamboozling: http://fsehs.nova.edu/ie/qep/forms/engagement_keeps_the_doctor_away.pdf

By: Robert Bacal

Robert Bacal — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:04:52 +0000

You have to wonder if Gallup is composed of idiots. Here’s a great example of the errors cited above in a gallup piece entitled Engagement Keeps the Doctor Away from Gallups management “journal”

Take a look at it. It’s SURVEY data. They ask people what they think about their health and their jobs. They don’t measure health. They don’t look at sick days. Or any other real indicators. Why is that?

Could it be because if they used real data, the house of cards would fall? And there is a hell of a lot of money riding on the construct?

It’s a shame and a sham, and perplexing as to why a major organization can continue to make simple logical and research errors like this. (again see above).

Is it greed? Stupidity? Ignorance? An undergraduate could see through this stuff.