I grabbed supper at Quizno’s a few days ago and saw two of the most disengaged employees I have ever seen. In the half hour I was there, they took two smoke breaks, in uniform, right in front of the door. We barely got greeted. The floors were filthy. The tables were dirty. they left a full garbage bag outside the front door. The parking stalls in front had bottles laying in them. The chairs were all upside down on all the tables, 1.5 hours before closing. The counters were in disarray. Thankfully, our subs were great, but as I sat there, I thought “these are two disengaged employees.” But then I began wondering whose fault that disengagement is.
If we fully believe Gallup’s research on engagement, we would think that a) this is fully the manager’s fault, and b) if we somehow found a way to engage these employees, then everything else would fix itself.
But where does employee responsibility fit in? It’s fun to just blame management for everything, but have we progressed too far in our focus on leadership to always blame the leaders for disengagement? These two employees have choices to make. They chose that day to do very little work, to ignore common hygiene practices, to violate local bylaws by smoking in front of the door, to ignore the customers, and to not make our customer experience “engaging”. Shouldn’t they shoulder the responsibility for their actions, as well as management.
I don’t think the solution is soft in this case. Maybe these two should just not be working in a customer service field. But I blame them, not the manager for my bad experience.
Tim Vanderpyl is a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP) with Canada’s largest catholic healthcare organization. He holds a Master of Arts in Leadership from Trinity Western University and is working toward a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership at Regent University. He can be reached by email here or at his websitetimvanderpyl.com.
That is tough…and we tend to blame up because we all hate to be be blamed ourselves for poor work.
You cannot “train” people who don’t give a shit about the work. You cannot “train” someone to have a work ethic.
No matter who the manager is. There have been times in my life when I just did not value to work therefore it was not right for me. There have been time when I was a manager and had to tell people that this work is not right for them.
Individual responsibility and freedom of choice will trump any organizational effort.
I totally agree. Engagement theory would argue though that the employees are not engaged because the leader has not done enough to engage them. I just got frustrated with that point of view because all responsibility is placed on the leader.
I also think that if the work is not engaging, it is the responsibility of the employee to self-select out, and find something that is engaging. Unfortunately, when job markets are tight and economies are rough, employees are more likely to stay in a position they are not engaged in.
It may not always be the leader’s fault, but it’s always his or her responsibility. Good leaders and effective managers accept this as their duty. Of course, individual responsibility is important, and it would be ideal in a perfect world. But in this reality, focusing there could lead to unchecked buck passing. You need to be able to hold leadership accountable because that’s why they’re supposedly there in the first place.
This is a thought provoking post. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment. I agree on the responsibility aspect but still think employees need to take accountability for their own actions as well. If I go to work tomorrow and do a bunch of dumb, disengaged things, I think that’s my problem, not my boss’s fault.
You are definitely right in mentioning individual responsibility in the context of a perfect world. Unfortunately, imperfect employees, led by imperfect leaders, in an imperfect world inevitably means some employees will end up disengaged.
Very well said. This is a centrally difficult issue even for great leaders. Such discourse helps expand everyone’s perspective on this.
I like your post Tim and agree with you. One word that I have been using lately to start conversations is followership. I mirror Collins’ 5 levels of leadership to drive home a point that we will and should be labeled for how well we work towards the goals of our leader as well as our jobs.
Leaders need to offer the invitation to dive into work, and followers have to be willing to accept the ownership – - then somewhere in this conversation engagement appears – - or not in the case of your experience.
I like the comment, it made me think and brought me back to some conversations I have been having a lot of recently. Nice post.
Scott, followership is definitely an under-appreciated part of leadership theory. Ira Chaleff and Robert Kelley have both promoted this, but we still tend to focus only on the leaders. We blame them when things go wrong, and worship them when things go right.
Totally agree on your comment that leaders need to dive into the work and followers need to accept ownership…it still confounds me as to why that doesn’t happen as much as it should.
Hi Tim.
Thought provoking post. I understand your point. And you are right on target, employees bear some responsibility for their actions. However (don’t you hate that word), I think leadership/management is at fault here. Why are these workers still there? Who is guiding them? They are behaving badly, because they are allow to. Where is the customer feedback mechanism that allows employees like this to be weeded out? Great organizations don’t happen by accident. In his book From Good To Great, Jim Collins points out that sometimes you have to let people off the bus.
Have you ever watched Tabitha’s Salon Takeover? Salon owners ask her for help in saving their Salon. She shows up and the Salon is a mess. Poor customer service, lazy or worse yet, incompetent staff. The reason… poor management and leadership.
Hope this makes sense.
All the best!
John
T
John, don’t get me wrong. The manager bears a lot of responsibility for giving these employees such a long leash and for not helping them succeed elsewhere (ie. firing them). I was there on a Sunday, so my guess is that that manager wasn’t around that weekend and the employees took advantage.
However (I do like that word!), I still think the employees bear a share of the blame. If you hate your job, then go find something you don’t hate. If you hate your boss (or think he/she is incompetent), and are sabotaging his/her work, then go find another boss. It confounds me when people can’t be self-aware enough to do that.
I have to jump in here with a slight disagreement. I don’t think it’s the boss’s responsibility to engage any team member. That’s an outcome that results from what the boss does, but also from external factors and a team member’s choice. What the boss is responsible for is doing those things (also called good supervision) that create an environment where engagement is likely.
I struggle too with the responsibility associated with engagement as well. External factors do affect engagement, many times beyond the employer’s control. A dysfunctional home-life will affect any employee’s engagement at work. Market fluctuations and the recent recession create uncertainty in job security. And many other things as well.
I am curious though, should employers focus on engagement at all? If it is truly a byproduct of good supervision, then the foci should be on supervision-related things, and not on engagement itself. Maybe we worry too much about the effect, rather than the cause when we talk about engagement-related topics.
Engagement seems to be a bit of a vogue topic, so I’d be curious to hear from the other commenters on this as well.