Cari Info

by Tom Agnew, Mark Royal and Rebecca Masson

Engaging employees, while clearly important, is not sufficient to sustain maximum levels of individual and team effectiveness over time. Too many workers are stymied on the job, held back by roles that do not suit them or work environments that get in their way.

Many organizations today are focused on enhancing levels of employee engagement -- with good reason.

In the rapidly changing environments most companies now face, where roles and responsibilities are continually evolving, organizations must depend on employees to act on their own in ways consistent with organizational cultures, objectives and values. And faced with a challenging global economic environment, many organizations are needing to do more with less, making the discretionary effort of employees willing to "go the extra mile" for the organization all the more important.

However, significant numbers of organizations that enjoy high levels of employee engagement nonetheless struggle with performance issues. In these environments, employees are energized by goals and objectives and are eager to help their organizations succeed. But they themselves often indicate that they do not feel optimally productive.

Engaging employees alone, while clearly important, is not sufficient to sustain maximum levels of individual and team effectiveness over time.

What's the missing piece? To borrow a line from the movie Jerry Maguire, engaged employees seem often to be saying to organizational leaders, "help me help you." In other words, put us in roles that leverage our skills and abilities and allow us to do what we do best. Give us the tools, technology, information, support, and other resources we need to be effective.

And, finally, get out of our way. Don't dilute our focus and consume our energy with tasks that don't add value. And don't introduce procedural barriers that will interfere with our ability to get things done.

Most organizations today employ a sizeable number of people who are stymied at work. These individuals are aligned with corporate goals and objectives and enthusiastic about making a difference -- but they are held back by roles that do not suit them or work environments that get in their way.

Frustrated employees represent a real lost opportunity for organizations. From a motivational perspective, organizational leaders have these employees where they want them. But when it comes to ensuring that they are as productive as possible, organizations are missing out.

Frustration is Overlooked Problem

Hay Group Insight research indicates that in organizations today frustrated employees may represent 20 percent or more of the total workforce. Below is a verbatim comment from one of these employees, drawn from a recent Hay Group Insight employee opinion survey:

I need support, and my manager and his boss are not doing their best to provide it. I am inundated with work, and I end up staying here late each night. I root for the company and I think we are one of the good guys in the industry. I like my job despite this situation and I think things will change for the better eventually. But waiting for that time to come is very challenging. I'm almost ready to throw in the towel.

This comment is reflective of themes that are common in many organizations. This individual is committed to the company and his or her job and anxious to make a positive contribution. However, the lack of support from the organization and its leadership makes success hard to achieve. While still committed at the moment, there are ominous signs of potential disengagement or turnover in the future.

Indeed, frustrated employees are unlikely to persist over the long term in this state. Where strong motivation to succeed is not paired with similar levels of support in the work environment, one of three things is likely to happen.

Some engaged employees may certainly, through force of effort, find ways to break through the barriers presented by low levels support and upgrade their work arrangements to match their motivational levels.

But other frustrated employees may find equilibrium by reducing their motivation to match their limited opportunities to succeed. That is, some engaged employees, weary of beating their heads against a wall, may simply decide that giving their best effort is not worth their time and stop trying.

Still other frustrated employees can be expected to vote with their feet and leave in search of greener pastures where their strong motivation to succeed can be matched with more supportive working conditions, leading to an unfortunate brain drain of an organization' s best and brightest talent.

Thomas Britt of Clemson University has explored the negative consequences of high levels of engagement when individuals face significant challenges to getting their jobs done effectively in the context of military roles.

In a survey of 1,200 U.S. Army rangers, Britt found, not surprisingly, that obstacles to high performance such as work overload resulted in lower levels of morale and job satisfaction. Notably, however, these effects were greatest for the most highly engaged soldiers.

Indeed, "the most committed and personally invested rangers, the ones who ranked work-relevant values as the most important, ranked morale and job satisfaction lower in the face of insurmountable impediments. Simply put, the rangers who cared most about their work were the most demoralized when they were thwarted from doing their best."

Along with the negative consequences of a lack of support for success for the motivation of highly engaged individuals, Britt also points to the likelihood of increased turnover.

"For these high performers," he argues in a 2003 article entitled "Black Hawk Down at Work" in the Harvard Business Review, "factors they can't control -- role ambiguity, inadequate resources and overwork itself -- can hinder their best work and drive them to seek jobs elsewhere. The ones who stay behind may well be the ones who just don't care."

Unfortunately, most organizations are poorly positioned to identify and respond to the concerns of frustrated employees.

Insofar as employee surveys have traditionally focused on employee motivation (e.g., satisfaction, commitment and engagement), survey findings often fail to highlight issues related to the supportiveness of work environments.

And frustrated employees may be unlikely to voice their concerns in other ways. As they are typically highly committed to their employers and their jobs, frustrated employees may be disinclined to complain about their situations -- and those who do may be unlikely to press the point if work arrangements are seen as intractable.

But even if employee frustration is communicated to managers in one form or another, the messages may not always fall on receptive ears. While a lack of motivation can be viewed as a problem with the employee, a lack of support points the finger back at the organization.

And addressing concerns about support for employee success may in some cases involve more fundamental changes to work arrangements than organizations are willing to tackle.

Support for Success

To get the most from engaged employees, organizations must position them to channel their extra efforts productively. That is, motivation to contribute has to be matched with the ability to contribute.

In our view, support for success, impacting the ability of engaged individuals and teams to make maximum contributions, has two key components.

The first, personal utilization, requires that employees are effectively matched to their roles, such that their skills and abilities are effectively put to good use. In deploying talent, leaders need to consider not only the requirements of the job and an employee's ability to meet them, but also the extent to which the job will draw upon the employee's distinctive competencies and aptitudes and fully leverage them.

The second, an enabling environment, involves structuring work arrangements such that they facilitate, rather than hinder, individual productivity. In an enabling environment, employees are supported by processes, procedures, and resources (e.g., information, technology, tools and equipment, financial support) that aid in getting the job done.

And they are able to focus on their most important accountabilities without having to work around obstacles in the form of non-essential tasks or procedural red tape.

An organization may be able to succeed by the force of will of motivated employees in the short term, but over the long haul, adequate support is necessary to avoid burnout.

Consider a case-study example. For a major U.K. retailer, we linked employee engagement and support for success across approximately 500 stores with store-level measures of customer satisfaction and fiscal year revenue against target, collected at two different points in time.

Employee engagement and support for success were both associated with more favorable customer and financial outcomes -- but after a six-month lag, support was a much stronger driver.

What's needed to ensure that motivated employees have the supports they need to be optimally effective in their job roles? While there is certainly variability in different organizational contexts, our research points to four common support drivers:

1. Performance Management.
Clarity regarding personal goals and priorities enables performance by allowing employees to focus their efforts on essential, value-added tasks. Likewise, by continually "raising the bar," ongoing monitoring and feedback regarding performance helps ensure that employee capabilities are optimally developed and used.

2. Authority and Empowerment.
Where employees have appropriate autonomy and discretion, they are better able to structure their work arrangements to promote personal effectiveness. And by managing how they work, employees are more likely to find opportunities to leverage their skills and abilities fully in their job roles.

3. Availability of Resources.
An enabling environment requires that employees have the information and resources (e.g., tools, equipment, supplies) required to do their jobs effectively. And in terms of personal utilization, where employees are being asked to work hard, they understandably want to feel that they are working smart as well.

4. Training.
In an enabling environment, employees are provided with job-related training to ensure they have the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out key tasks and deal effectively with internal and external customers.

Appropriate training, which can turn potential into productivity, is also essential to ensure that organizations get the most from the abilities of their employees.

As the old saying goes, when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail. The present focus on employee engagement issues has led managers to view higher levels of engagement as the recipe for improved performance in roles of all types.

While employee engagement is clearly beneficial in most contexts, it may be less important than support for success as a driver of performance in some roles.

In highly routinized jobs (e.g., on an assembly line), for instance, the quality of employee training, the efficiency with which work is structured, and the adequacy of tools and technology might be expected to have a bigger effect on employee output than motivation levels.

From an organizational perspective, support may also be particularly critical in roles where high levels of turnover are expected (e.g., hourly staff in retail and hospitality industries). After all, when employees leave they take their engagement out the door with them -- but supportive work environments remain as an organizational asset.

Diffusing Employee Frustration

While the drivers of employee engagement tend to reflect issues traditionally associated with leadership, factors affecting support for success relate directly to the quality of management in the organization.

Unfortunately, from an undue focus on management early on, the pendulum has swung in more recent years to an equally excessive focus on leadership in executive assessment and development programs. Many have overlooked the importance of solid management, as a complement to effective leadership, for the success of an organization.

We offer five recommendations for reducing frustration in the work environment:

1. Leaders must recognize that a lack of support for employees is a significant business issue. In an environment where most organizations are straining to do more with less, frustrated employees represent a significant lost opportunity.

2. Organizations should undertake strategic workforce reviews to determine where support may be particularly important and/or likely to be lacking. Identifying support gaps is an obvious strategy for most effectively leveraging employee motivation.

But, as noted earlier, it's also important for leaders to consider where the support component of employee effectiveness may be especially vital.

3. Support levels experienced by employees should be monitored on an ongoing basis to give the frustrated employee a voice. Engagement surveys, focused on motivational outcomes, generally will not measure aspects of the work environment critical to enabling contributions from motivated employees.

The old saw is that what gets measured gets managed. But the corollary is equally true: What is not measured will not be acted upon. It is critical that organizations identify and respond to the drivers of support for success together with the drivers of engagement.

4. Managerial development programs need to address key aspects of the work environment that are creating frustration. In particular, managers should be encouraged to treat managing employee performance as a continual dialogue rather than an annual event.

Managers who regularly discuss performance objectives with their employees are not only in a position to provide timely feedback but also to stay attuned to factors in the work environment that may be inhibiting employees' success.

5. Leaders should identify broader organizational programs and initiatives which are out of alignment with key support drivers. In evaluating training budgets, systems for fostering communication between departments, or succession-planning processes, leaders should consider the implications for fostering high levels of personal utilization and creating enabling work environments.

Co-operative Financial Services, the U.K.'s largest consumer cooperative offering financial services ranging from banking, mortgages, credit cards and loans to pensions, unit trusts, insurance and financial advice, is one organization that is focused on identifying and addressing potential sources of frustration in the workplace.

"Everyone knows the damage that frustrated employees can do in the workplace," says David Povey, human resources manager, "and at CFS we are taking steps to identify frustration earlier, so we can act on it.

"We've now focused our efforts on ensuring we give employees the support they need to do their jobs effectively, rather than just engaging them with the organizational goals," he says. "We've established toolkit-style training for our people managers, using a diagnostic tool to understand their training needs. This, in turn, will enable them to turn potential into productivity. "

We believe that organizations that focus exclusively on employee engagement are likely to be disappointed by the extent to which improvements in this area translate into enhanced performance.

For organizations seeking to maximize individual and team contributions, we believe that engagement alone is not enough. From a productivity standpoint, the commitment and discretionary effort offered by engaged employees can easily be squandered if leaders are not careful to position employees in roles that fully leverage their potential and to provide them with the workplace supports they need to carry out their responsibilities.

Organizations need to build the dual notions of employee engagement and support for success into their employee feedback and survey programs, their operating practices, and their leadership and management development programs to increase employee performance and business success.