Engagement (part 1)

Sometimes I feel incredibly disengaged with work. I'll sit in meetings nodding and smiling at my colleagues but really I am thinking "how the hell can I get out of here and do something more interesting?" I had a particularly harrowing meeting a few months ago that coincided with my 4 year olds kindy concert. At the time of dropping my son off, I was not at all concerned about missing a bunch of kindy kids go through the noise and painful antics of "ag-a-doo-doo-doo, push pineapple, shake the tree,.. ." It took an arrogant peer dismissing some work that I'd done, feeling that I was being let down on a change I was pushing through and HR bogging me down in a policy point impacting my team that made me really question why I was at work...

That night I gave the propellor head a full debrief. He gave me a glass of wine. I went through all the usual wine-fired planning sessions (buy a newsagent, start consulting (what?), move to the big Australian, be a stay at home mum and adjust lifestyle accordingly,...). I then enjoyed the rest of the weekend. 

By Monday I was back in meetings nodding and smiling...

The fact is I did not really want to quit. I just wanted to enjoy what I was doing and make a difference. I wanted to feel engaged.

Here's some research on engagement:

• Engaged people have less than half the sick leave of the disengaged*
• Engaged employees are 87 less likely to leave the organisation than the disengaged**

Changing the organisation around me to make employees feel more engaged is a task for those with more influence and determination than me. Here's what I do for me when I am feeling disengaged:

• Talk to people, and work on projects where individuals feel excited, happy to share and enthusiastic. It rubs off.
• Its very tempting to grizzle to colleagues and most of the time they'll grizzle back. It's fun for a while but still leaves you in a pit of despair.
• Think of all the jobs worse than my own. I don't mean sewer repairs but other corporate jobs like mine that I still wouldn't want.
• Keep smiling and nodding your head... something better will happen soon...

Having engaged employees is good for business too. I'll cover that in part 2!

*CBI-AXA (2007), Annual Absence and LabourTurnover Survey

**Corporate Leadership Council, Corporate Executive Board (2004)’Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement: a quantitative analysis of effective engagement strategies’