Why You Don’t Want To Encourage Employee Engagement

Everyone is talking about benefits of employee engagement and having employees participate in their jobs and how the work gets done.  Well run and successful ergonomics, lean, process improvement and wellness programs have a firm foundation in engaged employees.  But don’t you think employee engagement is over-rated?  Why on earth would companies want their employees to be engaged?  Having employees engaged creates a climate and culture that is difficult to manage and sustain.   Having employees offer ideas on how to improve the company and their job is something executives and managers just don’t have time for…plus, it might put them in uncomfortable situations.  Here are 9 reasons AGAINST employee engagement: 

1. Employee expectations change dramatically—they actually think managers want their input.  “Why didn't you ask us?" becomes the common question when things are done without their input
2. This is very much related to #1, “Why didn’t you tell us?” is another annoying question that happens after employees become accustom to the improved communications that occurred while creating engaged employees
3. Employees ask their leaders difficult, intelligent questions that they never would have asked before.  Why?  Because once engaged and through better communications they now have more data, more information and more experience
4. Employees expect transparency.  They want to know and understand their company’s and departmental goals and budget
5. Employees want to know what is and isn’t going on in other departments.  They have talked with and worked with other departments (those pesky cross function teams) to solve mutual problems and now they expect that to continue
6. Employees expect to participate in decisions about hiring, purchasing, work design changes, etc. They want to be assured who or what comes into their department will be a great fit (that’s a crazy idea don’t you think?)
7. Employees better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their company, leaders and department 
8. Employees actually want to work here leading to reduced turnover while management turnover may increase temporarily (now who’s the boss here again?)
9. Employees act more like owners and less like employees.  They offer improvement and ideas on areas they see that are in need of change. (the nerve of them!)

The above was done with tongue firmly in cheek ;-).  Of course, engaged employees are wanted and are very beneficial to companies!  In a recent report, Gallup research found that the top 25% of teams - the best managed - versus the bottom 25% in any workplace - the worst managed - have nearly 50% fewer accidents and have 41% fewer quality defects. What's more, teams in the top 25% versus the bottom 25% incur far less in healthcare costs. So the result of having too few engaged employees is that our workplaces are less safe, suffer from more quality defects, and is also a driver for increased healthcare costs. 

Bottom line:  Organizations should spend the time, money and resources implementing a participatory system/culture whether the focus is on process improvement, wellness, ergonomics and/or lean or all of them.