Despite the shock both to the economy and unleashed by the Great Recession and the Great Outsourcing before it—leaving a population of grizzled survivors clinging to their cubicles–the conventional wisdom in the internal communication industry is pounding the drum for…yet more focus on “employee engagement.”
Indeed, IABC’s Communication World intones in its introduction to the current edition, “all of the research points to the fact that engaged and motivated employees help build a successful organization. But what does this really mean? And what role should leadership play in making this happen? There is an answer, but it’s not one that everyone understands. You must inspire people.”
YOU MUST INSPIRE PEOPLE. Such is the Word as preached by San Francisco. And “LEADERSHIP” is the folks to be doing the inspiring, perhaps with the aid of the usual internal comms industry heavyweights who’ve been appearing at the last nine consecutive Internationales (or whatever IABC calls their annual hoedowns these days).
I’m not so sure.
Here’s why:
1) Surviving employees are that—survivors. Sometimes, as filmmaker George Romero said of the survivors in his “…of the Dead” films, sometimes the survivors envy the dead. Others may still most preoccupied with the deteriorated conditions of their lives—underwater mortgages and spousal unemployment. Whether they are necessarily the folks to be tasked with the organization’s revival is still likely open to question.
2) As for “Leadership”—are they really leaders in a genuinely inspirational leadership sense—or simply the toughest, technically smartest managers who’ve moved up the ranks? Are you really telling me that putting a very accomplished accountant in front of an auditorium filled with punch-drunk customer service staff is invariably going to produce enough electricity to be worth anyone’s time?
3) There’s a good sense that neither staff nor management really yet has a clue about the current environment, and when or whether the fundamental changes that have been predicted are about to take place—making it difficult for managers to make any kind of meaningful assurances about the future that constitute what most employees really want to hear.
Interestingly, having returned from an 11-day trip to Germany to meet with leading players in the internal communication and PR industries, the idea of “employee engagement” is largely mocked as “inspirational talk” and is not considered a genuine or legitimate focus.
I’m not sure if much conclusive research has been done looking at “employee engagement measures” in Germany relative to Britain or the US, but if you look at the general health of the German economy, its ability to relentlessly export high quality goods indicates that Germany may have a thing or two to teach us—or at least to the point where we can question some of what’s currently sacred around “engagement”.
I believe there is much that effective, strategic internal communication can do in this environment:
• to help organizations and their leaders figure out where to begin to clean up the mess that’s been made over the last five or so years, and how to create a new set of expectations as a basis for rebuilding trust
• to help organizations involve their people in defining and creating futures that are worth staying for and fighting for—and not just continuing to survive
• to work with organizations on understanding the full range of stakeholder relationships that require active re-engagement, and to help define ways employees can play a meaningful part in this re-engagement
• most of all, to identify and effectively harness the real “employee engagement”—the contribution of energy, activity, ideas, social connections and relationships—that’s taking place in all viable organizations today.
But the first step involves understanding that top-down, one-size-fits-all “inspiration” may hardly the best next step for all organizations—and that it may be best to start by focusing on what actually is working. And you don’t need to ask me—just ask the Germans.
Mike Klein is a Brussels-based communications pro, and long-time member of IABC boards at the country and regional level, and can be reached at http://intersectionblog.wordpress.com.
