Engagement, Engagement, Engagement!!! Again!!!

In the latest rendition of the engagement conversation, Michael had these words to say. It would appear that we're (the bloggers) not the only ones talking about engagement. Here are a few more links with my links or excerpts:

Management Issues, Attitude and Engagement. Along with the below excerpt on engagement, this also speaks to my many posts on workforce planning and the aging U.S. workforce. You might also want to take a look at this article for their interesting "Six Types of the U.S. Worker" and the descriptions.

"Today's workforce already experiences alarmingly low levels of engagement in work. Improving engagement - finding ways to encourage individuals to invest more psychic energy in work - is the single most powerful lever that most corporations have to improve productivity."

"In summary, work plays different roles in peoples' lives," Erickson said. "Employees in each of these segments want different things from their work experience."

In interviews with 7,718 workers carried out by Harris Interactive, the researchers found that paying a worker more money does not, by itself, produce higher engagement levels.

Reasons that people feel engaged by their work vary from one segment to another, Erickson said.

HR.com, Why I Like My Job. HR.com actually went out and interviewed random people with this question. There are all types of people from McDonalds workers to FedEx. These are all jobs I'd loath to have, but it's interesting why some people are satisfied.

The Missing Element

One thing should be of paramount interest to all of you. Even with the person who demonstrated dissatisfaction with their job, the one element that did not affect job satisfaction was amount of pay. No matter how many dollars and cents you throw at a person, if a positive work environment, quality challenging work, and a sense of worth are missing, the level of satisfaction and amount of quality productivity will plummet. You may as well invest precious dollars in a dry oil well.

Dialog Newsedge: HR Managers Go For Employee Empowerment. This article talks about empowerment which is clearly quite different from engagement. However, the two are probably indirectly related and there are some OK strategies for increasing empowerment and decreasing attrition.