When "Employee Engagement Activities" are Harming Some of Your Employees

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Employers want their employees engaged. Several studies have indicated a strong correlation between engagement and organizational effectiveness, productivity and a lot of good things employers want.

I am not going to refute these studies. There are several researches that are conclusive of this. That means that most respondents in their surveys or interviews agree that this is an important factor at work. However, the means by which some companies try to achieve this gets the reverse - dis-engaging, instead of engaging employees.

Before I proceed with my corporate ramblings, let us define Employee Engagement. Macey and Schneider (as cited in Gabriel & Bennett, 2015) defines Employee Engangement as

a desirable condition, has an organizational purpose, and connotes involvement,
commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort, and energy

All the good stuff an employer would want in an employee. An engaged employee is someone who's looking forward to work and delivers his or her task with genuine excitement. Companies strive to develop this in employees if that innate excitement isn't there.

And we want that, I want that. But what I will be discussing are the non-work and social activities that some companies push their employees to engage in.* I am referring to the office games, presentations, contests, etc. Whatever FUN activities they think of - which they refer to as "Engagement Activities".

But these are fun, why are you such a killjoy?

I am not saying that this got to stop. Apparently, these activities have helped a lot but I am part the few who HR or management (worse, both) would overlook since it is better to take care of the majority (I am part of an HR team, by the way!). And I understand that since this is a world who favors the majority and the conformists.

I will also be speaking from the perspective of an individual employee and not representing any group or population. You can say that I am the outlier who would tick that Strongly Disagree to each statement in the questionnaire which favors the statements that this social activities lead to employee engagement.

Okay, so when are these fun activities not fun anymore?

_{image by Marc Mueller image source used under CC0 license}

Overlooking Individual Differences

Despite the growing diversity in the workplace, some still have a picture of the "model employee" who should be like this or like that. For instance, most companies still favor the extroverted employee even though there are studies that state that the best leaders are the introverts. This is just one example, I will not delve into the topic of introversion and extroversion.

If you want to engage your employees, do not box them and think everyone will respond to one approach.

Overlooking Individual Problems

Have you considered the depressed, the socially aloof, or anyone who would naturally feel uncomfortable in such activities. An employee may be experiencing bullying and is forced to join a team the excludes him or her. The more you push these activities to them, the more you are hurting them.

Some think that having them join such activities will help. But no one can conclude this unless you take a look at an individual level.

Including these Non-work activities in the Performance Appraisal

In this way, you are coercing your employees to join the office games even if they don't want to or they have no time. An employee may be swamped with work that day but would still need to attend these activities, not to mention after-work practices for a presentation.

When this is now part of the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of an accountant who deals with spreadsheets or a trader who deals with the market, it doesn't matter anymore if they delivered their work if they do not participate in these social activities.

Just because one does not participate in such social activities doesn't mean they're not doing their jobs. To rate them based on their activities in non-work events undermines their real contributions to the company.

In some cases, these are not overtly included in the job measurement but it is obvious that management provides more opportunity to the "socially active" employee.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of ways to encourage engagement that some companies may just find more difficult to implement, or they're just not be willing to do. The office games and fun ones are the easier and less costly of all. For instance, it's common that management don't involve most employees in strategic planning activities, or decision making that would make an employee feel more involved and valued.

And I understand that checking into every individual employees will be such a laborious, if not impossible, especially for an organizations with thousands of employees. But this is why you have smaller teams led by managers and team leads. Unless they're not doing their jobs to check on each individual.

Reference:

Gabriel, S. A. & Bennett, A. A.(2015). Getting Engaged: Top Tips for an Engaged Workforce.SIOP White Paper Series.
Retrieved from http://www.siop.org/WhitePapers/EngagementFINAL.pdf

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_{Note: These are my thoughts as an employee and is NOT based on Industrial/ Organizational Psychology research.}