By Shaun McCarthy
Chairman, Human Synergistics Australia and New Zealand



Are you riding the engagement wave? The theory is that an organisation with 'high' employee engagement might outperform those with 'low' employee engagement, all else being equal (Wikipedia). But engagement levels are really just one small piece of the puzzle, what is missing is in the detail. Employee engagement is in actual fact one of many outcomes of culture. It is not wrong to look at engagement - an individual level outcome of culture - it is just not enough.

A focus on engagement levels without an analysis of the culture of the organisation could be likened to trying to teach a football team to simply get out there and win without helping them understand what they need to do to win. It is like treating the symptom rather than the root cause. It is possible to see some improvements by taking this approach however sustained change is unlikely. 

Our approach to measuring culture provides detailed insight into the root causes and the outcomes (of which engagement is just one) of the existing culture. It measures Employee Satisfaction, Motivation, Intention to Stay, Willingness to Recommend the Organisation to Others and Willingness to Commit Extra Effort, among many other variables. Employee engagement is far too complicated a variable to be reduced to one simple score. As with all human interactions, the devil is in the detail. Aggregating multiple measures into one score ignores the differing impact of each variable. Human Synergistics' approach is to report on the detail – made up of 31 Causal Factors that drive culture and in turn impact on 12 important organisational outcomes at the individual, group and organisational levels. You can view this detail in our How Culture Works Model:

This level of detail provides the organisation with a prescription for change. By identifying the levers to pull in order to affect the desired change, the guess work is taken out of the equation.

While high engagement is generally seen as a positive thing, there is complexity behind this measure which should not be ignored. For example you may have high levels of engagement reflecting committed employees, but they may be committed for the wrong reasons. J. P. Meyer and N. J. Allen proposed three 'mind sets' that characterize an employee's commitment in A Three-Component Conceptualization of Organizational Commitment in the Human Resource Management Review 1991.

Affective commitment. The employee is positively attached to the organisation. In other words they want to stay in the organisation. It has been argued this is associated with job engagement as measured by Joining and Staying.

Continuous commitment. The employee stays with the organisation because it fulfils certain economic, technical or other needs of the individual. For example there may be little choice given the industry, the remuneration or other such variables. In other words they need to stay with the organisation. It has been argued that this is associated with organisational engagement and is reflected in Dependable behaviour.

Normative commitment. The employee stays with the organisation because they feel obliged to. In other words they ought to stay with the organisation. This again has been associated with organisational engagement.

Dependent on the type of commitment the individual feels they may or may not be willing to contribute the discretionary effort required to drive performance and make a difference.

It is also possible to have high levels of engagement and yet a culture characterised by defensive behavioural expectations which is proven to be detrimental to long term success. For some people their levels of engagement and satisfaction can be increased by simply making their job easier, and allowing them to cruise along within the status quo. Such Passive/Defensive cultures however inhibit innovation and achievement thinking.

So, high employee engagement does not necessarily result in high performance. Solely focusing on engagement is a missed opportunity to really see the root causes and underlying levers that drive hard performance outcomes.

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