The Employee Engagement Adrenaline Shot
If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
On their first day of working for your company, employees are already engaged.
They are excited to be there and look forward to making an impact and being part of the team.
But slowly, those happy, engaged employees turn into unhappy employees who are disengaged from their work.
That’s about the point the organization sends out an employee engagement survey. And when the less-than-stellar results come back, the company introduces new perks. Maybe free food or casual Fridays will help employees be more engaged.
Engagement temporarily improves before dropping off again, and the cycle repeats.
Too many companies are in the endless loop of low engagement scores, an adrenaline shot of a new perk, engagement scores going up, and the adrenaline shot wearing off.
How do you break out of this cycle? By focusing more on employee experience than employee engagement.
Employee engagement perks may seem exciting to employees at first. However, eventually the newness wears off, and employees realize they are still working for the same company with the same internal struggles. On the other hand, employee experience aims to correct and change core workplace practices in three areas: culture, technology, and physical space. Instead of just giving an adrenaline shot to boost engagement scores, employee experience digs deeper to make lasting changes.
Are you stuck in the employee engagement cycle? Stop thinking of engagement as an adrenaline shot and get to the root of the problem.
