Engagement. What if we Got it COMPLETELY Wrong?

It’s just business, right?  How much money is there in the employee “engagement” world?  Engagement models are sold like popcorn in movie theaters to Executives doing their due diligence in trying to show employees they care.  

And, it’s no wonder.  Working today is looking pretty grim.    Only 20% of us report being happy at work.    And, that is alarming, because your happiness impacts --- everything. 

Literally.  Your happiness quotient, if you were to give yourself a score, would highly correlate with almost every area of your life experience here on Earth - your health (90% of what we see the doctor for is stress-related illness), your relationship satisfaction, your work performance, your overall wellbeing….   This list could go on.   

Companies should be interested in their associates’ happiness.   The link between happiness and performance is no longer debatable.   We know that when you are happy, your brain actually works better than when you are not.   A lot better, as it turns out.   For example, when positive, you are 31% more productive than when in a neutral or low mood state; if you were in Sales, you’d perform 37% better; if you were a doctor, you’d make decisions 19% faster and over 20% more accurately…

So.   Happiness is a good thing.  All of the sudden, those millions of dollars spent on consultants on engagement seems worthy.   Phew.   What a relief… 

But, what if we got it wrong?

I worked internally as a VP of HR.   We did an engagement survey.   We measured how our associates felt about their job, their team, their boss, their working environment, their benefits, their compensation … 

And, when we found low scores, we developed “action plans” to address these low areas.  We painted the walls and institutionalized recognition programs.  

Our scores the next year were the same.   

Regression to the mean?  Ask enough people, everything is a 3 right?   No. 

See - happiness does not exist outside of you.   It isn’t just around the corner.   It isn’t found in the next promotion, or when you leave this job.  It isn’t in that new pair of boots or that shiny new car.   In fact, if we know everything about your external world, we can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness.   90% of your happiness has NOTHING to do with the external world, but rather – how your brain processes the world.   In short, what you make of it.   Whether you see it positively or negatively.   How you filter the world. Whether or not you are bothered by that person with 25 items in the “20 items or less” grocery store line.   

Our model of engagement completely assumes that if we change the external environment, we’ll make people happier.   And, that just does not work.   It never has, really.   Happiness is an internal process.   

The performance associated with happiness holds firm, though.   So, if we can get associates to be happier, everything thrives – performance, energy, creativity, innovation, mood…

You can.   But, the process is an inside-out one.   This is what we specialize in doing.  We are re-writing employee engagement by focusing on the individual.    We start with leaders, because organizations mirror their leaders and cast a shadow across their organization.   We hold leaders accountable to their internal work.   When leaders are conscious and present, the character values of a leader – honesty, empathy, passion, composure … emerge naturally and without effort.   

If you spend time investing in engagement models – know this:  the engagement models you are investing  in are accounting for maybe 25% of the variance in predicting 10% of happiness – or about 2% of happiness.   The other 90%? – it’s in the person.   Change their filters, change everything.  

WE have programs that do this work.   Gratitude at work, random acts of kindness, daily meditations, yoga, leadership mindfulness training … these represent the new paradigm shift that is already happening!   

We’re representing the other 90%.   

The Moksha Institute

 www.mokshainstitute.com

Why?  Because there is no other choice for us.   How can we help to heal our world when so many of us cannot see our way to joy due - overwhelmingly - to how we feel about our workplace.