During the past few years in many industries (especially in the US and Canada), we’ve seen a shift towards a work environment where it’s requested (or to put it better “demanded”) by employees to show a positive attitude on all changes imposed to them by management. The employee has to be “engaged”, “supportive”, “excited” and above all “positive” about all the changes happening around them. It’s not surprising that a host of consultants and authors pushing “employee engagement” and “corporate happyism” have seen their bank accounts growing in the last few years.
Many senior managers have fallen prey to these unproven theories and have made “employee engagement” and “workplace happiness” a top priority in their agendas. Workplace happiness and employee engagement are terms now used in most medium to large size corporations in the US and Canada. The mantra is “engaged employees perform better”, and in the name of “engagement” and “corporate happiness” management is willing to bend over backwards to prove that “corporate happyism” is working.
Unfortunately, the science behind such a claim is at best shaky. At worst, there are several studies pointing to the opposite! Looking closely at some cases of “corporate happyism” it’s clear that it’s a form of political correctness where the employee has to conform or else they’ll find themselves locked outside the “groupthink”. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing well the job that you were hired for, if you don’t smile too at the same time or if you don’t show a positive attitude you’ll find yourself being an outsider and without a job soon.
As Chris Hedges puts it, corporate happyism “…it is not, at its core, about happiness. It’s about conformity.” 1 In this model and environment no corporate goal can be too risky or impossible to achieve. Scepticism and disagreement to the corporate goals are not to be tolerated. Groupthink puts immense pressure to individual ideas and employees are herded into conforming to the corporate “ideals”.
Is there any difference then between the “employee engagement” model and the “top down management” model? Looking at this from my personal experiences with several companies, the “top down management” model was by far the most productive at the end of the day, and surprisingly, the one where the employee retention was the highest as compared to my experience with companies using the “employee engagement” model. I believe that what made the difference at the end of the day was that in the one company that followed the “top down management” model the job expectations were clear at all times, as was the direction. Management roles and areas were also very clearly identified and all managers were qualified to perform the task at hand.
On the other hand, companies that follow the “employee engagement” mantra seem to overstate the value of feedback and dialogue. In most cases, as outlined above, management “promotes” open dialogue when in reality they “demand” their employees to conform to a predetermined accepted behaviour. At the end of the day, again from my experience, management in companies that heavily promote “employee engagement” end up spending more time trying to conform to the ideal of “corporate happiness” than to really serve their employees and stakeholders.
Creating trust in the workplace is not easy, but it can be achieved by just being honest and open to discuss the real problems. Pretending that problems don’t exist, or hiding the problems under a blanket of “corporate happyism” only makes the situation worse on the long run.
REFERENCES
1Chris Hedges – “Happiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression”, Jul 29, 2009
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090726_happiness_consultants_wont_stop_a_depression/
4 comments
Tobias Mayer says:
June 11, 2011 at 5:34 pm (UTC -7 )
I tend to think of engagement and happiness very differently. I seek the former, and scoff at the latter. I’ve cringed through those happiness workshops, with all their fake hugs, high fives and inane grins, my only take-away being a great desire to punch the facilitator in the face — which ironically may actually create the happiness that he is seeking for me!
But engagement, now that’s real. A person enjoying what they do, being in the flow of work, not needing to clock-watch. How can that be bad? Truly engaged employees have opinions—they have a voice and they are not afraid to use it. When I see engagement I see creativity, confrontation, challenge. I don’t see groupthink.
E-Squared Media says:
June 11, 2011 at 9:19 pm (UTC -7 )
Valid points.
As you can see I put “employee engagement” in quotation marks. What I wanted to point out here is that most large organizations “promote” employee engagement yet in reality they “force” employees to conform to a specific behaviour. Having worked on several big projects I’ve seen that this is the norm in corporate America/Canada.
Employee engagement has to be “positive” and conform to a predetermined accepted behaviour.
How many employees do you know that are allowed to challenge their superiors’ wishes or be confrontational if they truly believe that things are not going well?
Remember, I’m talking about large organizations here, not small companies where employee engagement means a different thing altogether.
Tobias Mayer says:
June 11, 2011 at 10:03 pm (UTC -7 )
> most large organizations “promote” employee engagement yet in reality they “force” employees to conform to a specific behaviour.
Yep. I hear you. Most big companies build facades of collaboration and “team work” It’s usually BS. Still, I believe engagement is something to seek. Happiness, probably not.
Peter Stevens says:
June 11, 2011 at 11:36 pm (UTC -7 )
I agree with you, top-down imposed happiness is nonsense. More precisely, it is trying to eliminate a symptom without addressing the cause.
Command-and-control leadership (with all it entails) is at its heart demotivating. The message is ‘shut up and do what you’re told!’ Well that’s what people do.
I agree with Tobias, working with truly motivated and engaged colleagues is a wonderful thing, and you can do great things together. But to get this state, you have to create the conditions where motivation can happen. And as you point out, this is not about happiness workshops.
Scrum teams have often been successful at achieving this state, and Steve Denning, with his Radical Management, has sought to identify those patterns where sustainable motivation can happen and to establish the link between genuine motivation and corporate success.