This morning, i set self a small challenge – Does employee engagement have a positive correlation with productivity? Can employees be productive even if they are not engaged? Can they be engaged without being productive? (think public sector in India) .
In most research studies (see links below) Engagement is almost always found to be positively correlated with Productivity.
But what if, it was possible for employees to be productive without being engaged? What if they brought to work – not their personality, but their experience and expertise?
Surprisingly, this was the predominant school of thought in the manufacturing era, when we expected people to leave their personalities outside the door, with their shoes, and to wear them again on the way out. Inside, they were time and motion machines (think Frederick Winslow Taylor and the One Best Way theory) .
In the IT era, we said, we are hiring brains and not time and motion machines. And yet, we continued to do effort estimate on “man days” and “man hours” – based on the “average time it should take a person to do this task”.
Coming back to the subject, does an employee have to be engaged to be productive?
I think that productivity is a function also, of the personal discipline and professional ethics of the employee. Of course, here we assume that the employee has the relevant experience, expertise, and authority, and all the organisational factors have been taken care of. Those are hygiene factors in any discussion on incremental productivity.
Without any employee engagement measures, using the pure “Work-for-pay” model, the output is:
Work = Pay
OR
Work < Pay
OR
Work > Pay
What are the factors affecting this equation and the direction it tilts in?
The employee’s personal engagement level, his/her personal traits, since all employees are treated the same, but some are on the left of the equation and some on the right.
So, at least some part of the engagement quotient comes from the employee – from their own personalities.
When doing any engagement initiatives, the organisation has to target them, not towards general theories of psychology and Organisational Behavior, but towards the kind of employees they have hired in the first place. The extra benefit obtained from each engagement dollar is also a function of the fit of initiative to the personalities of employees.
In a small organisation, it is self evident. And in large organisations, this principle should be exercised using a simple breakdown process – let each sub organisation decide what works for them. Monitor results, correct course where required, but do not assume that the entire organisation has exactly the same kind of people.
Now, lets assume positive correlation between engagment and productivity, such that, for every dollar spent on engagment, the producivity does go up, only the scale is unpredictable.
i.e.,
Pay + Engagement = Work + x
where x is the additional productivity created by engagement initiatives.
Question to ponder: Can x be a negative value? Can engagement intiatives backfire and make employees even less productive than they would otherwise be? What do you think leads to negative values of x?
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Further reading
Here is the set of online resources that mentions other studies done on the subject:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110720142459.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513121050.htm
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