July 28, 2009

In my award winning book One Foot Out The Door, (How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business), AMACOM, 2008, I explain why the increased rate of change has led about half of employees to feel they no longer have control over what happens to them. The loss of control and the fact of massive layoffs leads to widespread fear and anxiety, lower productivity and innovation, and the feeling of being insignificant and easily discarded.

In contrast, there are hundreds of studies that find high levels of employee enthusiasm and involvement lead to success measured in dollars. While organizations that make the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, like the software company SAS Institute or Xilinx, a semiconductor company have worked very hard to avoid massive layoffs, that’s not true for most organizations.

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Employees need two different kinds of reassurances that increase their engagement level and enable them to produce their best work. The first I call Conditional Commitment, a policy that says If your work is outstanding and your skills and knowledge are up to date, and we need what you know, and we can afford to pay you, you have a job. In other words, we will not downsize casually, without a crisis.

The second form of reassurance centers on ways that communicate the value of individual employees. While traditionally recognition has involved money and promotions, other forms of acknowledgment can be just as effective.

Warren Egnal, CEO of Engagement Strategies, Inc. reports that empowering employees by giving them the freedom and flexibility to create aspects of their work environment that would make them feel more enthusiastic about coming to work every day is, in this environment, one of the best ways to ensure engagement.

For example, he observes that managers that support employees in the creation of fun work streams have created a sense of excitement leading to programs that employees find enjoyable and rewarding as well as relief from the stresses and pressure of day to day work demands. In a major global home entertainment company, for example, social Fridays where employees get together, enjoy refreshments and socialize creates connections that enhance collaboration.

Other fun teams have created dedicated work spaces where employees can go to relax, interact with colleagues, and come up with innovative business solutions including cost cutting approaches that management had not thought of before.

Not only do these low cost approaches create a more dynamic and enjoyable work place, but they have proven to increase employee engagement, the key driver of business performance, especially in tough economic times.