Finding an answer to the question “what is employee engagement” is much easier said than done. There is no single, universally accepted definition of employee engagement, although huge amounts of time and energy have been spent trying to agree upon one! In their groundbreaking report to the UK Government in 2009, David MacLeod and Nita Clarke identified over 50 different definitions of employee engagement.
The lack of single, universally agreed definition of employee engagement presents a great opportunity to figure out what engagement means for your organisation. Over the years we have run training and development for thousands of people on employee engagement. The discussion usually begins with “what is employee engagement?” Typically the conversation, and then the realization, that there is not a straightforward answer, splits the room: those who feel uncomfortable with the lack of an agreed definition and those who are excited about the prospect of coming up with their own answer. However despite the absence of a single definition, when talking about what engagement means, some key themes emerge pretty quickly. Words such as involvement, commitment, discretionary effort, collaboration, motivation and performance are common. How practitioners then choose to wordsmith these themes into an actual definition is up to them.
What we actually find more useful is to look at approaches to engagement and understand where people might experience engagement. Many years ago we lead a project with a client to understand what employee engagement in that organisation. An initial research phase made it clear that engagement meant different things to different people: for some having a company purpose they could connect with was important, for others it was the people they worked with. There was a realization that a single definition wouldn’t work. What we needed was a framework or an approach which could cover a range of different ideas and meaning.
So we landed on the ‘Why, What, Who’ framework for employee engagement.
– Some people get their engagement from the ‘Why’. The “Why” relates to the meaning people find within their work, the emotional connection to the company, the overall purpose of the organisation. Questions such as “why do I come to work” and “what does my work mean for me” helped them to discuss their own personal engagement “whys”. For some people it is about working for a company with a strong purpose such as a charity, for others it might be working in an industry that they connect with e.g. the music industry.
– Some people get their engagement from the “What” which is essentially about the job people do. For some people the ability to have autonomy was important to their engagement, for others the opportunity for mastery, or structure and process. But this is essentially about the job itself. An example here might include a university lecturer who is passionate about the day-to-day role but less engaged with the purpose of the particular university they are working for, this matters much less than the job itself which they might so in any number of different organisations.
– And finally some people get their engagement from the “Who” which relates to the people they work with, be it colleagues, customers or others, and the subsequent a sense of belonging this instills. This really helped us to understand why it is that employees could work in roles which weren’t particularly engaging in companies where they didn’t connect to the purpose but could still be engaged. For example someone who is fruit picking for a local farm might still be engaged as a result of the people they work with they would go the extra mile for their colleagues and their boss. But they might dislike the job itself and not have a big sense of purpose. In this instance the meaning they garner from their work is to support their colleagues and be a team player.
This model enables personalization of employee engagement, to ensure the approach and actions taken are right for individuals, their teams and the company. The model has helped create flexibility which wordy definitions would not have. We’d love to know what you think about this model or any others you are using to define and understand employee engagement.
