The Changing Face Of Employee Engagement

If employee engagement is to be sustained, a careful study is needed of the extent to which employees respect the organization and respect the leadership of the organization

- Clinton Wingrove

Are you tired of being told that change is here to stay?

But when wasn’t it? Since time immemorial, change has been at the heart of evolution — of species, of civilizations, of governments, of markets…

So, what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that despite millennia of practice, we have gotten better at resisting change than we have at exploiting it. We spend most of our time like King Canute, fighting back the tide of change, rather than like Frieda Zamba, one of the world’s greatest-ever female surfers, riding the waves even into her 50’s.

So often, when organizations face transformational change, however triggered, we rely far too much on winning the logical argument, believing that the waves of discontent that arose in the past can be held back. We create project teams, generate complex project management Gantt charts, and blitz the staff with communications packed with corporate-speak. But, as Dr. Marciano and I documented in “SuperTeams”1, in order for organizations to experience optimum performance and engagement, five forms of respect are critically important, and two forms in particular at the outset of any transformation: Respect for the organization and Respect for the organization’s leadership.

If employee engagement is to be sustained or built on during a period of transformation, a careful study is needed of the extent to which employees respect the organization (including any acquiring or merging organization) and respect the leadership of the organization(s)/transformation. I have personally experienced an organization being acquired by a new leadership team who were blatantly unsuitable. The impact of that factor alone on employee engagement was catastrophic.