Bridging Engagement Gaps

Disengaged workers contribute to approximately $300-400 billion per year in lost productivity, $2,246-$3,400 per employee in potential liabilities, and an estimated $12,000-$50,000 per employee rehire costs. Suspend in your thinking for a moment any personal beliefs or biases you might hold about the allure money as an effective incentive. Eliminating the amount printed on the paycheck, if we then think about what employees’ desire at work or from work, what specific actions do you believe will prime performance and yield the greatest ROI? Business articles, for instance, have focused on flex-time as a motivator. Take as many vacation days as you would like? Increased maternity leave for men and women? A shorter work week? What stimulates employees: uncompromising, stressful demands or generous time off? On the last question, except perhaps for very few people at either end of the spectrum, neither really. Will paying everyone the same salary solve the engagement puzzle? Gravity Payments creator Dan Price tested the hypothesis on the threshold of the influence one’s salary has on motivation, that is, after earning a respectful salary, somewhere between conspicuous consumption and minimum wage, does more money affect performance? Price pegged that number at $70,000 for all employees. As the taxonomy of engagement suggests (discussed in depth in the next chapter), Price’s intent to establish equitable stakes is an admirable and noble aim, but additional variables also must be attended to after salary fairness and equity has been realized. Engagement actually resides somewhere between holding the same shares and not only understanding but responding to everyone’s personal/professional stakes and aspiration at work. The answers to discovering the best incentives are dependent upon the nature of the workers, geographic needs, and local, institutional variables. However, generally speaking, when companies approach engagement consciously, profit flows from the fundamentally right things rather than an obsessive focus on profit or compliance. If engagement is high and workplace dynamics are highly functional, profit and compliance are effects, not drivers or regulators or engagement.