Defining Employee Engagement with Scott Salsman
Today's episode on employee engagement and last week's episode on transient hypofrontality if you caught that one, or both conversations with Scott Salsman who's been on the podcast before, but I wanted to give you a quick note that we recorded these episodes over a year ago. I pulled it out of the archives because it seemed relevant, given the recent podcast episode where I talked about Amy Edmondson and Kim Scott's article on psychological safety. Today's episode touches on psychological safety as well from Dr. Kahn's perspective, who is also a leader in the field.
Transient hypofrontality and employee engagement are two things that won't go away, the topic remains the same, and the content and research put into those topics is still really important.
So enjoy today's episode, this conversation with Scott is crucial. Stay tuned because we will have some new resources that we'll be rolling out soon. So this is a little teaser for that to stay tuned for some new performance mindset leadership development resources that we have coming your way.
On this episode you’ll hear…
What Chaili believes employee engagement actually is and how the pandemic has affected it, as well as Scott’s take on the topic
The importance of values alignment with the work that you do as an employee and as a leader
The three conditions that must be met to foster employee engagement and why people must be prioritized over productivity
Why Chaili and Scott believe that employee safety (physical and psychological) is the most important piece of employee engagement
Ready for more?
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay, Scott, I just did an Instagram stories on engagement in the workplace and employee engagement. It's something I keep ending up in workshops, where I'm talking about this with teams, and realize we should have a little chat about this on the podcast. So first, let me just share what my take on employee engagement is because I think we hear that word a lot. Like we need more engaged employees. But we don't actually know what that means. And truly, a Gallup poll came out in 2016, where they surveyed like 200,000 employees across industries, and they found that basically, a third of employees were engaged in their work, which means the others were not. But I think that that number has probably drastically shifted now that we're five years into the future and dealing with what we just came out of with 2020. And so I think the conversation around employee engagement is still really important. But there's some like basic tenants of employee engagement that I hear leaders not knowing or forgetting or just needing, like, a quick little, you know, refresher on. So employee engagement as a whole is the employee's ability to show up as their full self at work. And that's it, like it's not rocket science. Like, it's the ability of an employee to show up and be like, I am, who I am, I'm doing what I love to do. And I'm showing up in the workplace, and I'm engaged, and not just scrolling Facebook for eight hours. Right. So I mean, do you have anything to add on, like, how you see engagement playing out as like, what it actually means to be an engaged employee?
01:46
Yeah, I mean, I think the the engagement component, for me, a lot of it ties back to purpose and mission. So if we are in an organization were engaged, that usually means we're bought into what the organization is doing, and what what the work we're doing is meaningful. And that can happen from just a mission to your mission standpoint, I love the work that the organization is doing. So I feel like my values align with it. So I feel more engaged because the work I'm doing is benefiting something that I have tied value to, or it can come from leadership. You know, leadership, I think, and, you know, a leadership team can really create that mission aspect, even if the organization doesn't necessarily share the same value as the employee. So that's creating spaces where people feel valued, or people feel engaged, because we know these are basic components of healthy workplaces, right? Yeah, maybe the employee doesn't feel like they're drawn to the mission of the job, the job is a job. But the team is a component, that they are drawn to that they feel valued when they show up to work that they feel like they are being cared for that they feel like they do the leadership team is committed to them as an individual. And as an employee.
Chaili Trentham 02:56
Yes. Well, and you touched on one of the psychological conditions that has to be met, in order for people to feel engaged. So when we look at employee engagement, we can measure like we can, like look at lag measures, right, like our people engage. But at that point, it's too late. And so we have to look at like, how do we actually create these conditions? And Dr. Cohn is the researcher who spent a lot of time looking at this and found three psychological conditions that have to be met. And so you touched on number one, which is meaningfulness. And you talked about it even large scale of like, do I feel committed to the like meaningfulness of the organization? So it's not just like, do I feel purpose in my daily tasks. While that is still very important, right? Like, we want people who feel aligned with the work that they are doing, because we know that, that is helps guide us into flow state in our work, right? Like when we're, our strengths and skills are aligned with the task or challenge that we have at hand, but also on a large scale, is our work meaningful to the overall organization. And that's where sometimes like Scott, you and I worked in an organization where sometimes we had to make that connection for others to see big picture, like, this is the work that we're doing right here in our art department and this like microcosm of the organization, but here's how it's directly linked to the overall organizational mission and vision. And as leaders, sometimes you have to help make that connection, but a big part of it is creating a condition where the employee understands that and is fully bought into that, right. And then a big part of that is the meaningfulness to society. In general, like we know, especially our generation of leaders, we want to be connected to something beyond the actual work we that's why we see so many organizations committing to great missions and and doing great things around the world but also having some sort of component of like they either give back or they create time for employees to volunteer or they have components of you know, offering pro bono work even like there's way Is that organizations are giving and leaning into that altruistic side of supporting society at the greater level. So meaningfulness is that number one psychological safety condition that needs to be built. And then Dr. Khan has said that the second is safety, which does the employee feel safe? Showing up at work? Which again, this is one that we've talked about in 2020. A little bit wild because people have had to make decisions based on like health and wellness of family. Is it safe to go to work? Is it safe to go to work, and then come back home? When I live with an elderly family member? Or have kids, right, like that was a big one, for me, in chat, at least was to figure out like, do we pull our kids out of preschool and daycare? And what does that look like? And then a lot of parents obviously, needing to do that, because their kids were out of school and doing virtual learning, like safety is a big part of it. But here's I think, Dr. Kahn's most important point on safety. Like, obviously, we're always striving for safe workplaces. But this has an added level of emotional safety. Because he talks about, they have to show up as their full self without risk of negative consequences. Yeah. And that's when that like, that's tricky, right? It shouldn't be. But it is, because how many of us have looked at organizations and then like, I couldn't show up as my whole self because I wouldn't be accepted there. So that piece is key. And then here, I'll I'll touch on Dr. Kahn's third one, and then you can give me feedback. So the third psychological condition that has to be met is availability does the employee feel mentally and physically able to be in the moment? And this was, again, like, How many times have you been sitting there in a meeting, you're like, I have to go make dinner lunch for my kids. And I need to go to the grocery store. And we're out of toilet paper, like all of the things that are a mental checklist. And so I'm not fully present in the moment. And that availability and creating conditions for availability for employees, is also really, really important to this entire concept of engagement, because unless those conditions aren't met, the employee is not going to check the box on the Gallup poll that says, are you satisfied with your work?
07:14
This availability piece is, is the most crucial thing that I can I can think of right now is how are you emotionally and now physically available to the organization without fear of those negative consequences? Like you mentioned, and that's a whole nother layer to that is, you know, is organization putting productivity and process over people? How long? How long is that going to last? When we know that? Engagement, safety, availability, meaningfulness are at the core tenants of them actually succeeding? You know? So this this process of doing things with productivity at the forefront? And with process at the forefront? And people, you know, second or third down that list? I don't know how much longer that that can last for a lot of organizations,
Chaili Trentham 08:04
right? Because people should absolutely be at the top. Yeah, right. Yeah.
08:09
And in the virtual climate, you know, the way that things were done in a nine to five office space, just, we're fooling ourselves, we think that can be replicated. It just, it just can't, you know, we can get a lot of the same stuff done, for sure. But I think maybe some of the systems that are created around that need to be shifted in order to increase that employee safety and increase that, that physical and emotional availability of the leaders and the employees that are in that organization.
Chaili Trentham 08:38
Ya know, you bring up a great point that the work from home stuff is not going away. So we, as leaders in organization, have to shift and have to figure out systems and processes and, and redefine what it means to be a workplace when the workplace is fully digital. And I think it can be done, because there's organizations that are fully remote who have been fully remote for years, but they have been the different ones, right? Like they've been the exception, where it's like, oh, you somehow made that work and good for you type thing, or, Oh, it works for you, because you're an E commerce organization, or you're a tech company. So you're already have computery people. But I think that's where we're seeing the shift of traditional industries into the online workspace. And that's, that's going to be tricky. We should do another podcast where we talk about creating an online
09:33
work. And the ones that can do it are going to thrive. You know, they're they're going to excel at making adapt and change their systems faster than their their competition, and people are gonna want to go work for them in a heartbeat,
Chaili Trentham 09:48
right? Yeah, you're right. So employee engagement is the goal, whether it's in person or online, and it can be done because it's being done. Right now. People are pivoting left and right Now cheers to that
10:02
yes all the engagement all the engagement