Research shows that the key factor in promoting higher performance is engagement. It’s not employee satisfaction or even commitment to the job. Thus, it is critical that people (and notably managers) develop a clear understanding of what engagement is and is not for their team members.

Why might this exercise of identifying strategies to increase engagement be worthwhile? Well, in companies where ~65 percent of employees are engaged, shareholder returns are approximately 24 percent. Compare that to companies with only ~55 percent engagement: Shareholder returns are as low as 5 percent! What’s more, teams with high engagement experience less than a third of turnover compared to those not engaged.

Engagement is a commonly used term and it is often times conceptualized in much the same way as other employee attitudes (such as satisfaction and commitment). While engagement is related to these attitudes, it is distinct. Rather than defining the terms, let’s consider what it looks like.

People who are engaged are absorbed in their work – both physically and mentally. In fact, engagement is something you can see in people – it is visible in the form of high levels of effort, involvement, and even mindfulness. An engaged individual is often energized by their work and difficult to distract. These individuals value and identify with the work they are doing (so much so the work might not even feel like work). They are slow to discourage by obstacles (in fact, they thrive on solving problems), and they sincerely care that things go well.

Now that we know what it looks like, and we know that it’s a silver bullet for company performance (if you are interested in more data justification, drop me a note), how do we actually increase engagement?

There are three drivers of engagement. These include Psychological Meaningfulness, Psychological Safety, and Psychological Availability.

The first dimension is called Psychological Meaningfulness and this is having a reason to engage. This has much to do with the characteristics of one's job; it is essential that positions are structured to include “high motivating potential.” Jobs that have high motivating potential tend to be challenging and allow space for both autonomy and impact.

The second dimension is called Psychological Safety. While intuitive, this has to do with whether or not people experience the freedom and the safety to engage in their work rather than feeling like they have to protect themselves in some way. (Have you ever felt like you couldn’t dare speak up with a suggestion to do something differently? Yeah, you’ve experienced a situation without complete psychological safety).

The third dimension is Psychological Availability. This has to do with the capacity to engage. “Do I have what it takes to engage fully in my job?” This is much more circumstantial for the individual. Take a person’s physical energy, for example. If there is a poor balance between work and home, renewal is hard to come by and that will undoubtedly put a strain on the job (think burnout). The other facet of this third dimension is a person's confidence in their ability to do the job. In order for people to be really engaged in their work, they have to feel confident that if they invest themselves in their work, they're likely to succeed. And this is why reskilling, continual training, and developmental opportunities and feedback are essential.

In Brief:

Psychological Meaningfulness: Having a reason to engage
Psychological Safety: Having the freedom and safety to engage
Psychological Availability: having the capacity to engage (and support to do so)

These dimensions have a great deal of nuance and if you are presently experiencing an engagement crisis you are not alone. Many companies are facing a heightened challenge with engagement after well over two years of employees managing heightened emotional and physical stressors. If this is the case for your group, contact me.

Bear in mind there is also a significant amount of reading you can do on the topic of employee engagement if you prefer a self-study approach. Thanks to the seminal research of William Kahn who crafted the Work Engagement Theory and is also considered the Father of Employee Engagement, there is much to be gleaned from his work on how to increase not only company performance and employee retention, but will also improve the health and well-being of your employees.