Strategic dimensions for successful

employee engagement
Lecture 5 – Dr Anna Joel
Developing your definition

• As we have discovered there are various

definitions of employee engagement
• Whatever definition one decides its important
that key stakeholders within your business
understand and support your definition
• You definition is an important building block of
your engagement strategy.
Developing your definition

• Getting your definition right is an important step

in developing your engagement strategy
• In addition, coming up with an aspirational
vision for the work you are proposing is also
helpful
• A good vision will provide inspiration and
direction for your employee engagement
activity, helping employees to understand
where this is going and motivating them to want
to get there.
Developing your definition

• Your vision for your employee engagement

strategy should align with your organisaions
vision, and if they can be one and the same,
then so much the better!
• This is an important step in ensuring your
engagement strategy aligns with and support
your company strategy
Aligning your engagement
strategy to company strategy
• It is crucial to define your own goals and
outcomes
• Transformational engagement- the process of
defining the goals and outcomes of your
engagement strategy will enable you to ensure
that it is aligned to your business strategy.
• Sometimes the objective is to create a great
place to work, or become an employer of
choice.
Common employee
engagement goals and
business outcomes
Typical employee engagement goals;

•Achieve Investors in People Gold

•Get on the Sunday Times for Fortune
•Tope 100 list
•Become a great place to work
•Become an employer of choice
•Increase survey response rates
•Increase employee engagement
•Index on annual survey
Common employee
engagement goals and
business outcomes
Example business outcomes;

•Reduce employee turnover

•Reduce absenteeism
•Increase productivity
•Increase sales
•Improve customer experience
•Improve company reputation
Some questions..

• Why is it that engaged employees go the extra

miles?
• Why engaged employees work harder, produce
better results, are more innovative, ultimatley
outperform those employees who are not
engaged or actively disengaged>
• Being engaged is a positive stat for an
individual- it’s a good place to be.
The (positive) psychology of
engagement
• Positive psychology is a branch of psychology
that has been around for around for about 20
years
• It was born out of Martin Seigman’s research
on learned helplessness, which in turn led to a
focus on learned optimism.
• In 1998, Seligman was elected president of the
American Psychological Association and
positive psychology became the theme of his
term
The (positive) psychology of
engagement
• Positive psychology helps to understand under
what conditions individuals flourish and thrive.
We know that engaged employees flourish and
thrive.
• This theory takes a strength-based approach,
looking to learn from what works, rather tan
always focusing on what doesn’t work and how
problems can be fixed.
• This is a subtle, but significant, shift in the way
we approach and think about human behaviour
The (positive) psychology of
engagement
• Shawn Achor, an educator, speaker and
consultant, spent 12 years at Harvard
researching what makes people happy. His
book, ‘The happiness Advantage’ describes
how happiness at work fuels success and
performance- the research also helps to explain
why engaged employees outperform others.
The (positive) psychology of
engagement
• Many of us approach work like this: ‘If I can get
a new job, more money, a promotion I’ll be
happier in my job, and I’ll be engaged’
• Shawn Achor argues that this formula is
broken: with each victory our goal posts are
pushed over the cognitive horizon, and whilst
we may experience an initial high from
achieving these goals, pretty soon we’re
moving onto the next one: we never quite reach
the place we’re trying to get to.
Employee Engagement: time
for a new approach?
• There seems to be a gap between what
science knows and what business does
• The current business paradigm is often built
around external, ‘carrot-and-stick’ motivators;
however, the science demonstrates time and
again that this often doesn’t work.
• In his book ‘Drive’, Dan Pink (2009) argues for
a new approach for human capital practices
designed to engage and motivatie employees
Daniel Pink’s theory of
motivated productive
employees
• This new approach involves three essential
elements;
1.Autonoy: The desire to direct our own lives
2.Mastery: The urge to get better and better at
something that matters
3.Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the
service of something larger than ourselves
Daniel Pink’s theory of
motivated productive
employees
• Pinks’s approach highlights an extreme
mismatch between the human captial practices
that businesses use and the practices that
really work.

• The following three slides provide an overall

summary of Pink’s approach
Pink

• Pink demonstrates that with complex and more

creative style of 21st century jobs, traditional
rewards can actually lead to less of what is
wanted and more of what is not wanted. He
provides ample evidence to support the notion
that this traditional approach can result in;
1.Diminished intrinsic motivation (the third drive)
2.Lower performance
3.Less creativity
Pink

4. ;crowding out’ of good behaviour;

5. Unethical behaviour;
6. addictions; and
7. short-term thinking
The Candle problem

• A study was conducted a few decades ago by Pink

which analysed what happens when people are
given conceptual challenges and offered rewards
for finding a solution quickly.
• The exercise presented to the participants was the
‘candle problem’ Figure 4.3)
• To complete the exercise, participants must attach
the candle to the wall so the wax doesn’t drip on
the table (Figure 4.4)
• The key to solving the exercise is to overcome
‘functional fixedness’.
The Candle problem

• The participants must see the box as more than

a container for the tacks; they must also be
able to see its function as a platform for the
candle
• This task is neither routine nor algorithmic; it
requires a relative amount of creative thinking
and problem-solving ability.
The Candle Problem

• Participants were split into two groups- one

group were told they were being timed in order to
collect norms on solution times for the exercise,
the other group were offered monetary incentives
for completing the exercise quickly
• The results were very interesting. They found
that the incentivized group took nearly three and
a half minutes longer to complete the exercise
than the group who were not offered an
incentive. Why? Pink suggests, ‘rewards, by their
very nature, narrow our focus’
The Candle Problem

• This study further supports the notion that

rewards can be effective for routine tasks, but
may stifle performance and reduce creativity
when tasks demand flexible problem-solving or
conceptual thinking.