‘The study surveyed more than 8,000 employees in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific to gain more insight on employee experiences on a global scale. The study found that 86% of employees in the U.S. who work for high-performing organizations are engaged, as opposed to 20% of employees feeling engaged at low-performing companies. Those who work at companies who are customer-centric also feel four times more invested in the company (84%) than those at organizations who aren’t customer-centric (19%).
“An organization’s people create its success,” (…) “While very few employees wake up saying ‘I want to do a terrible job today,’ most also aren’t overly excited to get to work in the morning. This report amplifies the argument for engagement and how employers need to work on the things that really matter to maintain a thriving workplace.”
Ok, so let’s unpack please. Suspend judgement. ‘86% of employees in the U.S. who work for high-performing organizations are engaged’ and ‘20% of employees feeling engaged at low-performing companies’. But, what about if ‘High performance organizations create engagement in 86% of the workforce’ and ‘low performing companies don’t manage to engage more hat 20%’.
So, if you want high employee engagement, make sure you are a very successful high performance company, please.
Forget the delicacies around words such as ‘engagement’, even the measures used. What we have here, in the whole Employee Engagement Industry is the Mother of all Chicken and Eggs problems, plus massive Confirmation Bias. Those who have ‘decided’ (confirmation bias) that employee engagement creates high performance companies, have their data on a plate. But do they consider the alternative? The Egg before the Chicken? What is cause and what is effect?
You could argue that those who push for the Chicken (‘So, if you want high employee engagement, make sure you are a very successful high performance company, please’) are not immune from their own conformation bias. And this is true. However, that is confirmation bias with small letters, and a small chicken, because this view is probably not taken by more that 10% of people in this industry.
We are so locked up in a input-output model that we are constantly confirming (numbers up an down) that employee engagement produces high performance companies and we are less prone to see that high performance companies produce high employee engagement.
Ah! Both! The Both Brigade. OK, OK, but if you can’t distinguish between a chicken and an egg, be careful with your scramble chickens for breakfast.