Getting in touch with a healthy bit of "Employee Satisfaction Revolution" skepticism

Here is a great video that provides a handy toolkit for evaluating claims. It reminds me to continue to challenge the claims of "ES" and not allow it to slide into a faith based ideology.

Here is the good news. The Employee Satisfaction Revolution provides the tools anyone would need to test our claims and try to recreate out results. One of the greatest strengths of American style capitalism is that it is a vibrant and energetic laboratory in which ideas are constantly tested and retested.

42 Rules for Employee Engagement is 42 Too Many

In a response to a review of 42 Rules of Employee Engagement by Susan Stamm, Peter Hunter waxes poetical and underscores the duality I see present in the "EE" community. First the comment...

Thanks too Alan but the title for me indicates that this view of engagement is simply another book of tricks to manipulate the workforce.

The quote " ‘how do I get people to do what I need them to do" indicates that the author is approaching the idea of engagement from entirely the wrong direction.

The power of engagement come from allowing each individual to make a choice to engage in their work.
When this happens the performance is phenomenal and is measured on the bottom line in numbers that make grown accountants weep.

Love is a way that people feel.
The literature that has been written about love, how to do it, how to do it to someone else, how to avoid it, would denude a handy sized rainforest but none of that well meant advice counts for anything when you put two people together and just let them get on with it.

There are no rules, let alone 42.
Just an understanding that we want to work with the workforce instead of against them and are prepared to listen to what they need to make that happen.

Maybe that is a rule?

Peter A Hunter
www,breakingthemould.co.uk

Is it possible that there are only two species prowling the EE jungle? Esoteric, self-actualization through meaningful gurus like Peter and mercenary carnival barkers like Stamm? I'm sure that is an over-simplification, and yet I like Employee Satisfaction norms that speak to the middle ground of practicality for business, and I somewhat higher quality of work-life for the employee.

The Employee Satisfaction Revolution Can Lead to a Family Satisfaction Revolution

This article makes the case that satisfied employees have more satisfying family lives.

In short: good vibes that start at work can flow to the home and community. Therefor it is incumbent on business owners to create employee satisfaction and thereby help create a happier world.

The Savage Chicken View of Employee Satisfaction

www.savagechickens.com

"Forced Fun" and "Team Building" Propaganda Instead of Employee Satisfaction?

Watch the videos embedded in the linked Boing Boing post and marvel at the ability of a company to be so deluded.

From the post:

CIRCUIT CITY PLAYED CREEPY TEAMBUILDING PROPAGANDA TO SELF ON DEATHBED

Near the end, electronics retailer Circuit City produced a series of shiny, happy video dreams for its employees to watch.

Fantasy: presenting Circuit City as a corporate self-actualization cult ("We're going to take Circuit City and make that brand very cool and very emotionally contained") will make a difference.

Reality: Circuit City replaced its skilled workers with kids on minimum wage, then shriveled like a plastic bag in an oven.

In addition to giving a glimpse into Circuit Citiy's death spiral - the Boing Boing post headline gives a glimpse into how employee satisfaction programs are sometimes viewed by the general public. But he public (which is made up of people who work for a living) gets what some many large companies miss. You don;t need slick PR campaigns to create Employee satisfaction. You need to treat people well.

Do Rewards Work? Not Really.

Lots of food for thought here...

Do Employees Need to Feel that Their Work is Changing the World?

Will Marre thinks so.


My sense is that "employee engagement" that is driven by "a belief that their work is changing the world" puts mere employee satisfaction out of reach of most companies. Most people will only ever view their jobs as jobs - not as missions. In my experience that is okay. There are still a great many benefits to building an employee satisfaction culture. But this academic notion that people have to feel like they are "changing the world" probably inhibits companies from investing in employee satisfaction.

Vidoa Via employeeengagement.ning.com

Speaking of "IT" and the Employee Satisfaction Revolution

Google is using a new algorithm to calculate which of their employees are most likely to quit.

I, for one, welcome our computer overlords which will reduce our lives, DNA, preferences, "likes and dislikes" into algorithms and strip away the illusion of free will.

Via Winning Workplaces

Thoughts on Coming Employee Satisfaction Revolution and the Passing IT Revolution

"ES" (Employee Satisfaction) can be the productivity driver on the next few decades in the same way "IT" information technology was a productivity driver over the last few decades.

Just as in the '90's companies adopted forward thinking IT strategies to achieve efficiencies and create competitive advantages in the marketplace, today forward thinking companies who adopt forward thinking ES strategies will create a competitive their advantage over their competition as this century enters it's "teens."

"IT" has had a great run and in fact, it was the managers who came of age during the IT revolution who laid the ground work for the management thinking behind the ES revolution. However, IT has increasing become a commodity.

In 2003 Nicholas G. Carr became "the bogeyman of the information technology industry", by publishing an essay in the Harvard Business Review called ''IT Doesn't Matter."

In it he said:

"Technology ''is beginning an inexorable shift from being an asset that companies own in the form of computers, software, and myriad related components to being a service that they purchase from utility providers," Carr writes. ''Few in the business world have contemplated the full magnitude of this change or its far-reaching consequences."

Obviously deploying technology intelligently is going to continue to be important for any business - but deploying "ES" strategies intelligently will be what separates the winners from the losers.

Or as "rickman's posterous" puts it, "If IT has become a commodity, then only an organization's people and processes can make a difference.

The Employee Satisfaction Revolution Coming to a Company Near You

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When discussing the link between ES and productivity, I think that this Corporate Leadership Council "Key Findings" PDF splits hairs differentiating between "employee satisfaction" versus "employee commitment", but it concludes...

Employee productivity depends on the amount of time an individual is physically present at a job and also the degree to which he or she is “mentally present” or efficiently functioning while present at a job. Companies must address both of these issues in order to maintain high worker productivity, and this may occur through a variety of strategies that focus on employee satisfaction, health, and morale.2

Possible Covers For "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution"

Larry Knox, the brilliant Art Director at Prestwick House has come up with some great concepts for the book (available Nov. 2009)

Welcome to the Employee Satisfaction Revolution

Over the next few months I'll be blogging about the forthcoming book, "The Employee Satisfaction Revolution."