As Dr John Watson answered the telephone at 221B Baker Street he could hear the mounting panic in the caller's voice.
"Watson, come quickly – I'm a witness to cold-blooded murder," exclaimed Sir Henry Baskerville, CEO of Going to the Dogs Ltd.
"It's my disengaged employees, they're killing my business."
And so began the notorious case that would become renowned as A Study in Employee Engagement...
By enlisting the help of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr Watson, consultancy Festo put together an entertaining, enlightening and far from elementary workshop on employee engagement at Works Management's recent Manufacturing Conference at the Hinckley Island Hotel in Leicester.
Participants entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the workshop – which was presented in the guise of a Cluedo-style mystery – by finding and interpreting clues to the character traits of eight fictitious, but realistic 'employees' and how these impacted on their engagement with a struggling company.
They discovered not only how difficult it can be to identify engaged and disengaged employees, but also how staff retention, business performance, productivity, skills and customer satisfaction can be improved by encouraging good employee engagement.
Dr Watson – aka Neil Lewin, learning and development consultant at Festo – began by explaining the background: "Engagement is a measure of the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work. What do we mean by 'discretionary'? It's going the extra mile, leaving no stone unturned. It is not just people doing their job, but looks beyond that. It's giving that bit extra. The important word here is 'giving' – it is not being demanded or instructed; rather, it's voluntary input."
There are, he pointed out, essentially three types of employees – engaged, disengaged and actively disengaged. Those that are engaged represent 17% of the workforce in the UK, according to a study by pollster and analytics business Gallup (http://bit.ly/1BOHor3). More alarmingly, 26% are said to be actively disengaged; these are the people working hard at not working.
Lewin added: "If we take three elements – satisfaction, alignment and drive – we can start to build a model of employee engagement incorporating eight character profiles based on those three axes."
But why bother to identify the engagement profiles of your employees? Lewin again: "We need to understand the current make up of our workforce and, ideally, we need to do this before we launch new initiatives on them. How do we know who's going to support the initiative? How do we know who's going to decry it? Who do we need to be working with to get the most out of this? That requires the skills of a great detective."
Right on cue, the super-sleuth himself – Sherlock Holmes (aka Festo's Tony Solway) – arrived on the scene to describe how our workshop members could help to solve the mystery.
After introducing the eight 'suspects', he explained: "We will split you up into groups and you will visit each of the eight workspaces which represent where these characters work. You'll see visual clues and there is a sound tile in each 'room' containing an interview with the suspect.
"With those visual clues, and with what they have to say, we would like you to identify their alignment, their drive and their satisfaction, and record that on a clipboard."
The delegates had three minutes in each 'room'. At the end of that period they moved onto the next room. To keep things simple, they were told that each of the eight people exhibited one engagement profile.
The game is afoot
Our amateur gumshoes began their detective work by visiting each booth and taking notes, examining the clues and reaching their conclusions. Then Lewin outlined the suspects' personality profiles.
Using these (below) and the character types (explained at the end of this article - 'Engagement gauge: Character types explored'), why not try your hand at a little detective work? Can you work out who is guilty of being the prisoner, passenger, challenger, champion, ambassador, sceptic, saboteur and thief?
The protagonists
Rachel was keen when she joined the company, but that enthusiasm is long gone. Her sales managers have worn her down, her job satisfaction has waned and she's waiting for a new job to come along. She's not particularly proactive so she's not rushing out to the market to get out of the company. Rather, she's sitting back. She likes what the company is doing and where it's going, but she has low drive.
Joshua has seen it all before, but he quite enjoys what he's doing; he has high job satisfaction, but is not highly engaged in his role. The attitude that sums him up is: "When you've been around as long as I have, you know that nothing is really new. I've tried most of these initiatives before – they didn't work then so why should they work now?"
Ronnie is keeping his head down and literally taking everything he can. And that doesn't just mean ransacking material things; characters like Ronnie will also take other people's recognition and reward if they think they can get away with it. So, although he's not particularly proactive, Ronnie will happily steal possessions and credit.
Martin is quite animated, always shooting his mouth off. He's also vindictive – he'll target an idea and attempt to tear it apart. His type is often referred to as the 'well poisoner'. He'll come out of a team meeting and instantly start dissing the initiative before it's even started. He's actively seeking advancement because he hates his current job role.
Connie has high drive, alignment and satisfaction. She's a very high performer and is already looking for the next challenge. She sees no obstacles to driving the business forward. However, people like her need to be nurtured. She must be constantly challenged and mentally stimulated if she is not to get bored.
Henry is similar to Connie in many respects, but doesn't have the same drive. He's happy with the direction in which the company is headed, but he's not out there pushing it forward. He's highly reactive, even with his own team. So, for example, he'll sit in his office thinking 'they'll come to me if there's a problem'. He's happy with the status quo.
Ralph is on board with the company's initiatives and likes where it's going. He's also happy freely to offer advice to help the company move forward, but believes this is falling on deaf ears. He also feels trapped in his role. So, although aligned with the company, he's not satisfied because he assumes nobody is listening to him. He's looking for another job.
Denise is fiery, proactive and vocal. She's happy with what she's doing now, but is unable to reconcile the changes that are coming. So, she's not aligned with where the company is going; its direction doesn't sit happily with what she is talking to her customers about. Although satisfied in her role, she struggles to see its connection to the business.
Whodunnit?
Having outlined these eight characters, Lewin explained why it's important to identify employee engagement levels: "Why would we want to go through the exercise of trying to identify who we have in our team? For a start, it reminds us that our team is made up of individuals. We all have our own needs and drivers and one management solution won't necessarily fit all. Around 57% of our workforce (the disengaged) is sitting on this seesaw. They are being influenced by a lot of things, but two factors in particular – their immediate line manager and the people within the team who are decrying the changes that are going on.
"We need to see where the critical mass is within our team so that we can start to influence that big middle ground. Before we put in place management and communications strategies, we need to understand the people in our team as individuals."
And so to the dénouement:
Armed with a clutch of clues to the personalities of the eight 'suspects', Sherlock Holmes and his steadfast assistants were able to identify their character traits, and thus appraise their different levels of engagement.
This enabled Holmes to offer sound advice about the specific management styles that would boost engagement levels and get the best out of each individual.
Engagement gauge: Character types explored
ACTIVELY DISENGAGED
Saboteurs:
- are proactive and therefore potentially the most dangerous of the disengaged employees
- tend to be resentful or vindictive towards the company
- seldom act without purpose and demonstrate 'consent and evade' tactics (agree to carry out the supervisor's order, but avoid implementing it)
- are inclined to harbour a negative attitude towards the company
Thieves:
- take whatever they can from the company, sometimes material, but also stealing intangibles such as credit
- often want to look good to cover their real intentions
- sometimes 'hide' within the group
- are reactive
NOT ENGAGED
Challengers:
- are proactive
- are not afraid to speak their mind (although some of this can result from insecurity)
- are not aligned to the company
- can be alienated from the workforce if their challenges are fuelled by emotional aggression
Passengers:
- may only express their views when asked to do so
- are aligned to the company
- have the potential to be good workers, but this will vary with their mood
- can alienate their colleagues if they openly express dissatisfaction
Prisoners:
- might be disruptive because of what they say
- what they say could have relevance because they are aligned with the company's goals
- are inclined to be proactive although this can change
- could be at greater risk than challengers and sceptics of becoming actively disengaged
Sceptics:
- are reactive
- have a low tolerance of actively disengaged employees, although they may not openly say so
- tend to have doubt, often fuelled by their lack of alignment and driven by their insecurities
- probably only express their opinions in a secure environment
ENGAGED
Ambassadors:
- have very high job satisfaction and enjoy what they do
- are positively aligned to the company's strategy
- need to feel valued by the organisation
- are reactive and need to be presented with opportunities to support new opportunities
Champions:
- are satisfied in their job and are aligned to where the company is going
- don't need to be steered
- find it difficult to tolerate actively disengaged employees
- are proactive
