Rethinking Employee Engagement

“Cristina Amigoni: It's not because we don't know the answer. It's because we have a fairly good idea what the answer is, and we want to actually see if there's self-awareness around it. Because then, something can be done about it."

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

"Authenticity means freedom."

"Authenticity means going with your gut."

"Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you."

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"Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be."

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills, no makeup, just being."

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Christina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello.

Alex Cullimore: It's just a host episode today.

Cristina Amigoni: It is.

Alex Cullimore: We're just us flying solo, flying solo, flying solo. So, we thought we'd talk today a little bit about something that we have discussed in different ways in the past, but particularly, around measurements, as well as how it comes up in the workplace a lot, and that is employee engagement. So, something that very much a hot topic. People have thought a lot about it, especially in the last 10 years. Culture became a big thing. People are talking about employee engagement. We've, of course, many times quoted the Gallup polls that talk about what 80% plus of people reporting being disengaged and work.

 The general issues that come with people being disengaged, you can show up without showing up. You can basically be paid without doing a lot and go into the cover if you're disengaged, as well as not helping, and you can get in the way of overall projects initiatives. All understandable things perhaps to do while you're disengaged, but definitely things employers want to look at, which explains why there's a huge popularity in getting things like employee engagement surveys and sending out cultural surveys. I think, personally, I'm starting to notice some flaws with this system and with this whole, let's go ask people.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, there could be some flaws for sure, there are. Yes, what's not clear, as you were talking about that, especially all the Gallup surveys that come up, and then, they show up in newsletters, and the headlines, and there's this constant tracking of like, "Oh, it went up one point" or "It went down one point." It's almost like watching the elections, but a more permanent, hopefully, or not, hopefully. Whichever way is the right way.

I started wondering, it's like, besides measuring and having these numbers, and then, having some sort of opinion about them. Is anything ever done? Do they actually matter? That's what it's not clear. It's like, do they actually matter? Oh, we went from 80 to 70. Okay. So, what?

Alex Cullimore: Yes, it gets so easy to – especially if you don't dig into the results, if you don't go to – I want to clarify my statement. I'm not saying, you shouldn't go ask your employees about things, and make sure people, and you understand what's happening with people. I think that the general system of employee engagement surveys, and especially on really broad scales, can be a bit flawed in how we do it and what we're doing. Because I think one of the huge issues is what you're talking about, which is, what's the follow-up? Wait, great, you've did this whole elaborate setup. Now, you have an idea that x percentage of people feel perhaps engaged or disengaged, assuming that this is a good measure? If it is, what are you going to do about that? Even if you could get magically say we're at exactly 67% engagement, what do you do to improve that?

Maybe you have some sub-questions, and now, you've started to think about things like, "Oh, people want to know more about what's happening in the company, perhaps." There's a lot more investigation work than just what tends to be the knee-jerk reaction, which is like, "Great. Well, we're going to have quarterly meetings. Now, there's a monthly meeting of what's happening in other areas of the company or something." It's not that that's a bad idea. That might seem like it's moving towards answering that question of, hey, people said they want more information. We're going to try and do this, but let's go back into the questions you have to ask before you start anything, which is, what are we really trying to accomplish? People have said that they need more information. What does that really mean? What are they looking for particularly? When do they feel like they didn't have information? Is there a specific example of like, oh, people got blindsided by something? Is there a reason that they couldn't have been told that beforehand? Like, is this something you can do anything about?

How are they interpreting that question is what you really need to figure out before you'd even be able to address it, because how do you know what to address. It's fine to have another town hall. It's not like it's bad to have more meetings, more discussions with employees if it's valuable. But is that what's creating value? Is that what's actually sharing enough information? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Also, we've gone on rant some metrics and numbers. and basing decisions on those. So, if you've been listening, you all know how we feel about those. I don't think we need to repeat that piece, but that's the gap, which is why the comments give you way more information than the actual numbers. Because the numbers, even though they're supposed to be objective, everybody's going to interpret the question based on their own filters, based on how they see the world, and what's happening to them. And most likely, they're going to answer the question based on how they feel in that moment when they're filling out the survey, which could be a completely different feeling from how they felt the day before, the week before, the month before, the quarter before, because it's not like we take poll surveys every single minute or any type of survey every single minute.

So, what is behind the answer and what are you trying to get to with the question? Is the question the right question? And you used a great example before we were recording, it's like sometimes, it feels like asking someone, "Do you have a bomb in your bag?" Well, they're not going to say yes if they intend to use it. They're going to say no. So then, basing the health of your organization or the health of your team on that answer doesn't give you anything.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. This is something that – everybody knows that trust is important on teams. Everybody knows psychological safety is important on teams, so you try and ask questions, like, do you feel safe to push back? Do you feel safe to challenge what is happening? That's the bomb in the bad question to me. If people don't feel safe, you're not going to get an honest answer to that. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's the whole point.

Alex Cullimore: I get, wanting to measure that. I get, it seems like a direct question, and are you going to get a fair answer. Unless you know like you have a pretty good idea, I don't think this team feels that safe, and you want to see if they are willing to say that, or if you feel like they're going to maybe dance around that issue. Then, it doesn't give you a lot of information, and it certainly doesn't give you enough information to give yourself a pat on the back that things are going great. In authoritarian structures, and work is somewhat authoritarian, there's nobody raising their hands at the dictator's table and being like, "Actually, I disagree with this plan." But if you ask them if they're happy, there's a lot of smiles. 

Cristina Amigoni: There's a lot of not responding. Then, the tendency is to like, okay, we're going to take silence as consent. I'm like, silence is almost never consent. Almost never a consent. Silence means, I don't feel safe speaking up. I do not agree and I don't feel safe saying that I agree. I'm confused, I was multitasking, I have no idea what you just said, but yes, probably in the very low minority of this pie chart, I'm the little thing, probably non-visible. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. So, that goes to the issue that I have with the employee and engagement surveys. I totally get the intentions. I think it's actually a really great thing to go out and try and figure out what these problems are. If you can't trust the answers and if you're honest with yourself, it would be hard to be able to trust these answers for the reasons we're talking about, not just the psychological safety, which is the biggest one, but also things like you were talking about, where it's, this is a point in time. I could have just gotten devastating news that the project I was hoping to jump to has just been canceled, and now, I'm not going to be able, or I'm not going to get a promotion or something. What do you think my answer on your career growth opportunities as a company are going to be? They're going to be pretty low. Or just got a promotion and, oh, hell yeah, this is great. I think career growth is great at this company. That might not be representative either.

Even then, these surveys tend to be responded to weeks and weeks later, so that point in time is now passed. So, all of these reasons, and particularly, the psychological safety means, can you trust the results that are coming out of this? If you can't trust the results that are coming out of this, this is a large amount of time, generally money, and generally effort to try and digest things that are very hard to parse, unless you can trust that it's valuable information. If you already can't trust that, we're already off the rails here.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, which is that even before figuring out like, what are you going to do? So, let's say, psychological safety gets a 50% score, making this up. For whatever reason, the industry standards, the side of the company standard, the whatever cites the standard that we want that to be at 80% because that means, again, what? What does that mean? But what are you going to do about it? What are you actually going to do about raising psychological safety from 50% to 80%? Because, unless you read the comments and you can make the correlation, you still don't know what's missing. You don't know what the gap is, and you don't know what's causing that.

Besides unknowing whether that's even accurate, and I would say on something like psychological safety as we talked about. If it's 50, I would probably go with 25%, because 25% of those people didn't feel safe enough to say no.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, it's ironic that you say that. If 50 % of people are willing to say no, maybe there is some psychological safety. So, ironically, they're saying that there isn't, but there is enough to say that there isn't, which is a confusing metric. If it's really high, maybe it actually is really high. If it's medium high, it's probably low.

Cristina Amigoni: It's probably low.

Alex Cullimore: It's like I'm saying. Well, how do you feel between one and 10 and almost inevitably saying seven? Like, yes, yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, what's the solution? I mean, besides knowing what you're going to do about these things and having a plan, and carrying it out, and making it something that's actually measured over time, not measured related to something, nobody else knows, and then, measured again. And then, still don't know whether going up to 60% is enough or it's good enough, or 40% is good enough. Because again, in psychological safety, maybe 40 is better than 50, because now more people are being honest. So, there actually is increased psychological safety. But those are the pieces, so like, what's the solution? Because you still want to provide a way for understanding what's happening in the organization and what's happening with the employees, what's happening with people. So, what's that way?

Alex Cullimore: I like your question, because what are we really trying to solve? Let's think about what engagement is supposed to measure in the first place. I think that, maybe we get this backwards sometimes. It's the same thing as people saying, high trust teams perform well, and then, they're like, "Okay. So, let's make sure everybody trusts each other.

Yes, but have you put the building blocks of trust together. Trust is the outcome. Engagement is the outcome. A lot of the times, you'll see – for many years ago, there was like high engagement is high-performing companies. Like, you get high employee engagement, the company can start growing, it can scale, it can have a lot more innovation, et cetera. So, you see why people want engagement.

So, let's go even more basic than that. Let's talk about what engagement is, because you can't just demand it. You can't just assume like hope for engagement. You have to create engagements, and that is not just a straightforward task. So, things that I think of when I think of engagement, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and additions to this list of facets of engagement in my mind, would be things like, "Are you speaking up?" I don't mean that everybody who's quiet has to be speaking up, but are you able to speak up? Do you feel like you can put your ideas somewhere? Even if it's not in every meeting, there's someplace that you feel like you're being heard. This is a good personal inventory to take, and then, hopefully, you can reflect that on your teams and see that from other people.

Are you speaking up? Do you feel like you want something to succeed? Are you just doing a project because it's the thing in front of you or are you doing a project because you want to see it through, you'd like to see something happen from it, you understand what the impact of this is, both on the general business and why this is important, why you feel like it's important? Do you feel like this is something that's moving you? Do you feel excited to be working on it? And it's not like you're going to be excited every single day and every single facet. But are you generally like, yes, I'm willing to put my time, and my one and precious life towards this?

Those are the starts of measures of engagement where you start to feel like, "Hey, people are willing to have some debate. People are willing to have some opinions. People are willing to push a little bit of energy, a little bit of passion, a little bit of emotion into these things.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, I think those are great ways to define what engagement is. Along those lines, engagement is a feeling. You can feel when somebody's engaged and you can feel when somebody's disengaged. So, sure, try to put a number around it, but you're still not getting to anywhere where you can do something about it, because you don't know what caused it and you don't know, okay, let's say it's 60%, 70% of the organization shows that they are with all these measures and all these questions, and the total engagement score is 70%. Okay. You still don't know where the disengagement is. So, back to, what are you going to do with these numbers?

So, outside of somehow cloning the people that care and putting them in every single room for every single meeting to actually feel the engagement, well, you have that. You have that in the people in the room. The people in the room feel if somebody else is engaged or not. You can feel somebody is, even if they're not speaking up, or they're not contributing every single time. You can feel whether, are they present? Are they following? Are they may be asking questions afterwards? Do they actually seem here? Or are they somewhere else? Especially in remote settings, when videos off, there's really no way.

You can tell sometimes if somebody's engaged, but for the most part, there's really no way because you can't even tell somebody's multitasking. So, you are only relying on whether they're participating, which is a very tiny little piece of that, because somebody could be completely engaged and not say a word in an entire meeting. That's not a measure of engagement. So, that's the thing. How do you get that feeling? That's where, ironically enough, having that trust, and psychological safety within that room makes it possible for you to notice that, and then, do something with it. 

Do you want to report it? Do you want to address it? Do you want to figure out what's behind it? But it does mean, somebody knows. It may not be one person knowing it for hundreds. That's impossible, but somebody knows whether people are engaged or not. It really isn't that hard to figure out.

Alex Cullimore: It's not that hard to figure out, but it is hard to get people to be honest about it, I think, which is why I think like the large-scale employee surveys become difficult. I think you bring up a good point that the smaller team interaction and the ability to get somebody in the room, I mean, a smaller room, not a general, hundreds of people meeting, but the small team meetings, the day-to-day things. That's where you're going to hear about this, and that's where you can actually ask about these things. That's where asking the employee engagement survey questions is fair, because you can then ask the follow-ups. We have plenty of times where we ask people about things like psychological safety. We ask them to rate themselves between one and 10, and then, the follow-ups come because the whole point is, okay, what made you put yourself there? What feels like it would move you up that ladder or down that ladder? What would be the benefits of that?

We had a great experience with a team who shared that like, "Oh, yeah, we feel pretty comfortable around each other." One person was like, "And I feel like we maybe don't, like we haven't shared enough details with each other to know when we're misaligned. So, maybe that will help us test whether we can be more safe with each other." It was a good expression of safety because they were willing to suggest a good hypothesis in front of the team. And it was a good observation that, hey, we do trust each other, and we haven't maybe worked together on a deep enough detail to see what happens when we don't have alignments, and to be able to really test some of that. Those are the kind of discussions that you can have in this small group, and that's where you can find that engagement.

This is where the giant surveys that go out to all the hundreds of employees, and you aggregate all the results. It's not quite law of large numbers like you're going to satisfy and find the actual answer here. It becomes almost more doled and all of the and flavors of interpretation on any given question get a little bit muddled, get a little bit changed. Every team's answer to why or when they feel like they can speak up is entirely different, and subjective, and will have to do with their specific context. That's really challenging to hear. I'm sure as a senior leader, that there's going to be too many myriad problems for them to immediately just kind of have large swath. We did this and now we're psychologically safe initiatives on. But that doesn't stop it from being true just because it's hard to do.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Well, and that's why we are – we think about a survey piece or any kind of surveying, and getting somebody's opinion. It shouldn't be where the data comes from, where the information that you didn't know comes from. It should be validation of something that you already know. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, it's a great check-in.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly, it's a great check-in. So, asking a team that you work closely with or you observe how they want to rate themselves in psychological safety or if they feel psychologically safe, and we do this quite a bit. It's not because we don't know the answer, it's because we have a fairly good idea of what the answer is and we want to actually see if there's self-awareness around it, because then, something can be done about it. Without self-awareness, the mountain is way steeper on moving that needle. Actually, in something psychological safety, if there isn't self-awareness, then we already know that score is down to zero or one.

So, it's a validation piece, which is why, having some sort of habit and ingrained mechanism here you're not looking to find out what's happening from an engagement point of view on a survey, but you're constantly in every interaction, kind of keeping a mental data log, and realizing like, "Hey, in this meeting, there's a couple of people that never speak up. Let's figure that out." Especially, you know, like, is it a personality thing? Is it because this is the meeting where they shouldn't even be in the meeting? Or for them, it's just information only. What's beyond the – they're not engaged. Because that's what tends to happen, is the label. It's like, "Oh, they never speak up. They're not engaged." I'm like, "Well, is it? Is that the answer that they're not engaged?

Alex Cullimore: Yes, and also, why. If that's not engagement, are they getting – do they not feel safe talking in front of somebody else? Does they have a bad relationship with somebody else in the room? Are they better at that one or the other way? Whatever it is, these are the questions to ask. That becomes the interesting portion of doing this work is, have you – I think, at the executive level, one thing I've noticed is, at least in a couple instances is that they want to do it, they have a good intention in launching these employee engagement surveys. Then, they get really caught up in the metrics because it feels like it's showing progress. If you feel like you're ticking up on certain measures, you're like, "Oh, we're doing it. This is right." That is a way to check in, but it can also be self-reinforcing where we're only trying to get people to answer those questions that certain way, not necessarily really address those root behaviors.

So, if you do things like find out about what psychological safety is, or you have a hunch that it's just not as safe as it should be, or it could be improved, what are you doing to help people understand what psychological safety is? How can managers help that? How can you have skip levels to ensure that nobody is being missed on this, that there isn't a manager who's good at hiding it from what's happening in their team, but good at reporting, that it looks all green and all roses to the person above them. How do you get a bunch of structures in place to make sure that there aren't a lot of loopholes? There are good ways to check in that you do have a good pulse, and that people even know what it's like to take a good pulse on that. 

There are a lot of times we can just promote people into these management rings and you just haven't been given that kind of understanding of what engagement looks like, what it means. You've thought a lot about your own personal engagement. You became a good individual contributor. Now, you have to think about it from other people and how you're going to encourage that. We don't do a great job of giving people the tools to do that. So, if you have results, what can you do to actually scaffold, and actually put the supports in place for people to know what psychological safety is and be able to encourage it? What does it look like as a manager to do that? What are things that you at the executive or senior level can do to exemplify that this is how we're going to do it? And then, have that cascade down, show the example of celebrating failures or whatever other pieces come out that help you do that. It's not that you can't do anything. It's that you have to do lots of things.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Again, like it's not a once a quarter thing, or once every six months, or once whatever cadence is. It's an everyday thing. Knowing that every day something else could be going on. So, it's not, "Oh, this is the judgment for the day. I'm going to take that," and that's it. No. It's like, "Okay, more data. " You want to collect data, collect the data that matters. And the data that matters is the daily interaction. The data that matters is noticing that when you have a meeting with these four people, everybody speaks, and it seems like everybody's open and they disagree with each other. And then, a fifth or sixth person comes in, and nobody speaks. That's data. Something shifted. What shifted? That's way more valid than an engagement survey percentage.

Alex Cullimore: That brings up a good way to think about engagement too, because sometimes, we suggest it in these work terms where it's like, you're engaged with your worker, you're not engaged with your work. It's not that it's even like something that might have gone wrong at work. Think about something happening in your personal life and at work, are you less engaged? Yes, yes you are. You have a massive migraine that day, you've had bad news from a pet or something like that, whatever the issues are, that can totally disengage you. You can be off; you can have just a lost bit of time. Does that mean that that's always the way it is? Does that mean there's something else that can be done? Yes.

The response should be totally different. Supporting somebody who's had some bad news personally is very different than having somebody who's actively just disengaged at the company, or doesn't like how the culture is working, and just may or may not ever fit in. Those are totally different response paths, but you could still get the same survey answer for it, even if you could get an honest survey answer. So, giving people those tools to actually dig in and to notice those shifts that you're talking about, notice that you're like, "Oh, this is different." And to be able to then talk about it, and build those relationships so that you can say, "Hey, it looks like you're disengaged, or have noticed in the last couple of meetings, it seems like you're drifting, or whatever." Is there something going on? Is there something we can help with? 

Asking those, of course, in the same way that we've suggested many times on this podcast, going very curious instead of judgment, leading with curiosity rather than judgment. Those are the tools that people end up missing in getting those engagement scores up. That's what you want to do. If you want that psychological safety, make sure people understand what psychological safety is. What are the things that they have experienced that stopped them from feeling psychologically safe so that they don't repeat those patterns as managers? How can they get that feedback to make sure they're not inadvertently going down some other path? They may be doing something with great intentions. It may have totally worked for them, and it might not be working for some of their team.

These aren't even points of blame. This is how you investigate this, so that you know how to address these problems. These aren't things that people are doing maliciously, usually. In almost every case, there's not a lot of malicious intent. There's not a lot of just trying to get things done in ways that may or may not be effective. Have you even told people what psychological safety is, and given them tools to measure that, and adjust for that, and given them examples of doing that at your level all the way down? Have you given them the ability to pull a rope out, rather than just saying, "We're at 70%, and now, we're at 72%. Hooray."

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Those are the things that we've talked about in the past. It's the squeaky wheels. So, if I'm driving a car and everything is fine with a car, I'm just driving a car. The other great example that we've heard recently is air. If everything is fine with the air, I'm just breathing. I don't think about breathing, I'm not measuring the quality of the air because it's good enough, it's good enough for me to just breathe, so I can do other things.

When I think about employee engagement, psychological safety, and trust. Those are the things, you know when they're present by not actually noticing that they're not present. So, it's the lack of presence of those that then it's the squeaky wheel. It's the smoke in the kitchen. It's the air quality outside. It's the altitude of the oxygen. You're now at 14,000 feet, and you can't breathe as well. That's when you notice what's missing. So, noticing what's missing actually gives you way more information than constantly measuring like, "Oh, it's like 80% oxygen today. It's 60% oxygen." No, can I breathe and go for a walk? Yes. I'm not thinking about breathing.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. How far could I run in this? 

Cristina Amigoni: So, it's totally fine. It's good enough for me to do what I intended to do. So, when we switch that around, that's when we need to pay attention to when it's lacking, not when it's present. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. You absolutely can measure that. I mean, it's like your own personal body health. I can do a little body scan right now and be like, "Oh, hey, wait, I don't have a sore throat. That's kind of nice. That's great."

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, so nice.

Alex Cullimore: And all of my limbs are working. I don't have like a pop in my knee. Nothing's currently like, "Ake, that's great." You can't measure these things. It's just not the first thing you're going to notice. It's okay that you notice the things that are off. Don't go looking for absence. You'll find some absence and you'll create your own blind spots, but you can measure the improvement in engagement by noticing what's not there. When you start to look around and be like, "Hey, we haven't had any conflicts in this team for a while," or, "Hey, it feels like we're communicating well." You can absolutely notice those things. You probably won't immediately notice them, because they just start to feel better. It just starts to work, and you start to do the things you felt like you intended to do in the first place. That's the measure of success. That's when you're improving.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's almost like whether it's Glassdoor or whatever review site, I haven't been to any in a while of companies. You get more comments and results. My guess is that there's a lot more comments and results on bad companies than on good ones. Because when you're in a good company, you'll tell your friends, and you'll tell your – but you're not necessarily going to go on Glassdoor and score it and provide your answers. But when you're having a horrible experience and it's a toxic place, oh, you want to have it known.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, that's a very good way of putting it. That's how I think about doing things like Google reviews. I have almost never write a Google review unless there is something that is just stellar out of this world, like, wow, that was incredible service and incredible, whatever thing it was. I'll absolutely go and make sure I put down as many names as I can, and put the five stars, and say like, this was absolutely incredible. Or on the contrary, if it's something that was like, wow, this was demonstrably terrible, this was so far off the mark. I went to get my tires changed, and I came out with a hole in my car. Then yes, I'm probably going to put that one in a Google review. I'm not going to go out there and put a lot of four-star reviews out there. Yes, that's good. That was decent. It was perfectly acceptable. Everything I would have expected. Like, great. 

I'm not even going to think about putting a Google review. But if something is out of this world, great. Yes, I want everybody to know. Something is out of this world bad, yes, I want everybody to know. Generally being humans, that threshold is a lot more – there's a lot of lower thresholds of things being bad for when I tell somebody.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, it definitely is. It's almost like a protection layer. I got to protect other people from having this experience. So, I may write the five-star stellar Google review when I'm being asked, because I do want to help somebody else, but I'll forget it. Until then, most of the times. But if the experience is so bad that the protection layer of the human brain comes in, oh, I'm going immediately. Like, this cannot, people need to know right away. I don't need to be asked. I know I've done the same for hotels because you travel, or airlines, you travel. Then, when you get home, you get the multiple emails, like provide feedback, provide feedback, provide feedback.

For the most part, I've ignored the emails when it's positive. But when it's negative, I don't even wait for the email. I was like, I am going in and providing feedback and letting somebody know that I had to change rooms three times because they kept giving me keys that either didn't work or were for a room that was already occupied, whatever it is. The funny thing is that, because even from, at least from a consumer point of view, and for companies that actually care about service. A negative review will immediately set a chain of events. It's like, I know that by doing that, I'm going to get a phone call, or I'm going to get an email saying like, "We want to talk about this."

If I wrote a five-star review, it would go on some statistics somewhere, and okay, great. So, that's the piece. From an engagement point of view, it's kind of the same thing. You want to be more concerned about the 20% disengagement score than the 80% engagement score.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's actually a great framing of it too, because if you've got 20% disengagement, you shouldn't be working to augment your engagement. You should be working to reduce the disengagement, which will do exactly what you wanted to do in the first place, just bump up the engagement.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Then, think about it from a machine point of view. Are you okay with your car being 80% engaged when you drive? Maybe you are. If you're not okay, because that 20% could be a flat tire, or it could be brakes that work sometimes, 80% of the time, but 20% of the time. It's all right. So, have a point.

Alex Cullimore: I'd really like to get that to 83%.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Have a point. What are you trying to measure? And what are you going to do with it? I want my brakes to work 100% of the time, but that's me.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I mean, that sounds a little bit weird, but sure. If you want your brakes to work, I guess we all have our thing.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Do I want my steering wheel warmer massager to work 100% of the time? I can probably go without when it's the middle of the summer. Yes, it's fine. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, that's a good way of thinking about it too, because what going to actually prioritize because it's one of the important things that will move that engagement up. And I've used this example on this podcast before, but there was a pretty funny one of a, the office sent out a bunch of employee surveys, got back some disengagement scores. People were not super happy with things, but they didn't dig in further. So, they just launched the things that everybody tried and became like memes and jokes of, "Oh, we're going to now have a ping-pong table, and we're going to have pizza parties, and we're going to have a happy hour or whatever. That's how we're going to fix this." They did all of those things, and of course, engagement scores ended up the same.

When they finally broke it down and started asking people, it turned out, the huge frustration was the office printer. So many people had to use it, and it was terrible. So, they spent $300 on a new printer, or about $1,000, whatever it was on a new industrial printer that everybody used, and it worked. Since everybody had to have so many interactions with a stupid machine every day, they were so frustrated. Then, someday, they get one that works, and I think, everybody feels great. It turns out that was the issue. That was a huge, like just sticking everybody's day, but they didn't just do the investigation work to figure out, "Oh, hey, this is something that's actually even more simple to fix." That goes to the prioritization, that goes to really finding the root causes. 

That's where I think I end up with the bone to pick and is not that fact that you're doing engagement surveys, not even the questions. Some of the questions, I think you just have to realize what you're going to get an honest answer for. I like the intentions. I like the fact that people want to know where their employees are engaged, want to be focused on it. But unless you're following up, unless you're figuring out what is actually happening, and you're going to take actions on that. I do mean, getting to what is actually happening all the way to as granular level as you can, and really thinking about it, and really trying out different incentives to get to the results you want, then you'll get better engagement scores. Not just because you wanted a better engagement score.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, you'll actually get better engagement, which it's the point. The score is not the point. Better engagement is the point. 

Alex Cullimore: That being said, there are some hilarious little pieces that I think we can identify here as other indicators of engagement. When you send out a giant survey, what is the reaction? Are people like, "Oh my god, I have to take another epic survey." That's probably not great, because again, if I'm thinking feeling good about things, it's not that hard to put five stars on everything.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Right. Like, "You want another survey?" If it's a ton of them, I think you could probably jokingly be like, "Hey, guys, what are we doing? Why are there so many surveys?" But if you get an actual frustrated response, that might be already be an indicator of lack of engagement. How many people are answering. That's like a pretty binary amount of engagement. If you're not even engaged enough to take the survey, that's probably just a –

Cristina Amigoni: Pretty good measure.

Alex Cullimore: Put that one in the disengaged column. Unfortunately, you lost that one.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's the same thing with psychological safety in a way. So, if you're measuring psychological safety, doing it in an anonymous survey, not going to tell you whether there's psychological safety. Just saying, the whole point of psychological safety is that, you don't have to be anonymous. If people don't choose to be anonymous, don't ask it in an anonymous way. Again, go observe. Do people speak up? Do they ask for clarification questions? Do they just take and run, even though they're running in the wrong direction? Do they disagree? Do they share with each other? That's how you measure psychological safety, it's in the room. It's not by having an anonymous survey asking for psychological safety.

Alex Cullimore: Well, especially, I mean, the anonymous one is challenging anyway. First of all, yes, there's the definition of like, if you have to be anonymous, you're already not safe.

Cristina Amigoni: You're already not safe.

Alex Cullimore: But secondarily, even if you can say that it's anonymous, people do not trust that. First of all, we live in a way too digital world with way too much of a fingerprint, and anybody who's read through hundreds of survey results knows that there's sometimes where you're like, "Oh, I know the voice of that person." When they put in any of the free text answers. So, you're trying to figure out who some of the disengaged scores are.

Even if you can convince people that it is anonymous, if you do get some angry responses back, there's your indicator. If you feel like everything was fine before then, and you send a survey out, and you've got some spice and some fire back, you can be almost guaranteed, there's a lot more that is showing up on that number. That number isn't your indicator. It's the fact that that does not match the perception that was being given to you up to that point.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. So, back to what to do. Observe. People know. We know what's actually going on. We may not feel safe saying it. We may not know what to do about it, but we know what's going on. It's not that hard. So, take that as the data, and take that as like, how do we address things as they're happening, not six months later, a quarter later, at a gigantic macro level. No, are my brakes working when I drive all the time. If they're not, I may want to address it and figure out what's going on. Not just because, 80% is good enough for my brakes.

Alex Cullimore: I think the intention is really important, and then, just go and observe and make sure you understand those things too. To go lead with a curiosity rather than judgments. If you really want a culture of engagement and there are plenty of reasons that that is a huge advantage to companies to any just experience to have that kind of engagement is going to be better for the people experiencing it and the people who would like to lead it. And it's the same as asking people for feedback in the middle of things like change. It's not saying you can accommodate every request, it's about making sure you understand, and that you can communicate which ones can be addressed, and not, and why they might not be addressed.

Of course, there's the hot button one of like return to office that, if you're going to get a lot of pushbacks on that, are you addressing why you feel like it's important to go back to the office? Are you addressing why it is or is not possible to offer a remote? And it's not – you don't have to capitulate; you just then have to put up with the consequences of what happens. If that person leaves, that person leaves. If that person stays, they stay. If you're a company that becomes more enticing because you have a remote option, great. If it hurts your employment prospects, you can absolutely make the decision. But don't do it with your eyes wide shut.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes, that's it. Don't do it with your eyes wide shut. Because the problem is that, it's not just hard for the person that's in it. It's hard for everybody else around them. Something like engagement. When you have a team and one person in that team is not engaged, the rest of the team goes down too. It's that 20% times of the break is not working. So now, the rest of the team is struggling because the one person is not engaged. Whether they're having to pick things up, whether they're wondering what to do, whether they're now wondering, am I missing something? If he's not engaged, maybe I shouldn't be engaged. Or I want to change teams, I want to do a different job, whatever it is. But the impact is huge. So, addressing it at the micro level is way more important than the macro level.

Alex Cullimore: That's actually is really important too, especially there's a contagious nature of disengagement, but there's also the contagious nature of engagement. So, if you are able to get these survey results go in, and dig in, and find all the root causes, or find a bunch of the root causes, and it feels insurmountable. Because now, you're looking at a whole list of problems. Engagement is also contagious. If you can start to work on some of these things, you can create domino effects. You can have things start to work for themselves. You can have people start to feel engaged, and reach out, and find other ways to find other people engaged. Now, you doing all of the work. It's not one team doing all of the work. You can address these things in pockets, and end up with a virtuous cycle, rather than a vicious cycle. These things will feed themselves the other direction as well. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, they really do. So, go figure out engagement. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, good luck. It's actually a really fun and good thing to do. I do think there are a lot of ways that it is unfortunately deployed. Then, it's not, again, not malicious intent on anybody's part, but it's worth knowing about, so that we don't do this in a foolhardy way, and we do, do this in a very specifically intentional way that we know what we're trying to get out of it and we're willing to go continue to chase this down because we are truly making engagement an important facet of what we're trying to accomplish.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. What's the why behind it? It doesn't matter. If we're not going to do anything about it, then it doesn't really matter. So, why measure it or why worry about it?

Alex Cullimore: Why are you spending time on it then?

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. So, yes, good luck.

Alex Cullimore: Good luck.

Cristina Amigoni: Hope you're engaged.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Rachel Sherwood, who help to produce our theme. And of course, our production assistants, Carli and Nikki, for whom we could not do this, or could not publish this. We get to do, basically, the fun parts. Thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts.

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. Follow us. We Are Siamo is W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.com.

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

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