Project Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business ManagerProject Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business Manager
It’s time to take a careful look at caring. One of my colleagues posted that she realized that “Thinking something is true does not make it so.” A great realization, and one that Mark Twain memorialized in his famous saying, “It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” These sayings both recognize the fact that you are much more liable to ACT BOLDLY on something you THINK FOR SURE is so, and if it turns out that you were wrong, you suffer the consequences of wrong actions. I just about had this happen to me yesterday when I was going to ask my neighbor what was making that ‘hissing’ sound in his backyard. It had been going on for days. Just then my puppy retrieved his toy right near the outlet valve to the pool at MY HOUSE. That valve was leaking and hissing. But I WAS SO SURE that it was over at my friend’s house. He wouldn’t have minded, but I would have felt foolish. It’s the same way when you THINK you are caring for someone at work, but then suffer the consequences when you ask them if they feel cared for, valued, and appreciated, and they don’t. Caring requires that the other person feel cared for, not that you are ‘doing the work of caring.’ Take a look at this piece from my dissertation.
Caring and Gen-Y–The Business Case for Caring. I will describe a little bit of the background of recent studies, and then conclude by summarizing the economic impact of caring.
Key factors for productivity in the workplace are often identified as the result of large scale studies. These correlational studies can identify trends and facets of the workplace that are of interest to researchers. One such set of studies comes from the Gallup Organization’s biennial poll of groups of employees world wide. They report (Harter & Rath, 2007) on interviews with human resource and line leaders and 7508 individuals from North America, India, Europe, Southeast Asia (including Australia) and China. In the North America sample of 3,342 respondents, 53% were female, and 47% were male. Half were Boomers, 41% Gen X and 7 % Gen Y (defined by Gallup as birth years of 1978 to 1990). Of the Gen-X’ers , 44% are in North America. Although this sample accurately reflects the population of workers at large, it does not focus on the factors solely important to the next crop of employees, the Gen-Y’ers. In the Gallup study the Gen-Y’ers represent 7% of the 7,508 respondents (N= 500), and their specific responses are reported in Table 2-1. Of significant note is the large decrease in Gen-Y ‘engagement’ (29% for the study group and 20% for the Gen-y’ers) and the corresponding larger proportion of disengaged workers (19% for the study group and 25% for the Gen-Yers. You can see that even though there is a lot of work to help our millennials or our Gen-Y’s, the disengagement continues to grow. You have to check in with the younger generation before they check out. Our hypothesis for caring and engagement seeks to give you the tools to correct this discrepancy at work.
Table 2-1. The 2007 Gallup Study of Engagement in the Workplace.
Attribute Study Group Gen-Yers
Engaged 29% 20%
Almost Engaged 27% 26%
Honeymooners
and Hamsters 12% 10%
Crash and burners13% 19%
Disengaged 19% 25%
These studies as well as previous employee engagement reports determined that the majority of employees were not necessarily focused on what mattered most to their employers. Get it? Your job is to make the work relevant. That’s more important than caring for people–in general–by about 16%.
Although engaged employees are enthused and ‘in gear’, and they are often seen using their talents and discretionary effort to make a difference in their employer’s quest, it turns out that fewer than 1 in 3 employees are fully engaged (29%) while 19% are actuallly disengaged.
Gallup further reports that full engagement occurs at the alignment of maximum job satisfaction and job contribution. This means contribution to the company’s success and personal satisfaction in the role. However, it’s here where the study takes a turn into the area of job satisfaction rather than how or whether an employee feels cared for or valued at work. Job satisfaction is not the same as feeling cared for at work!
The Gallup work (Harter & Rath, 2007) determined that common factors influencing job satisfaction are more opportunities to use talents, career development and training (all respondent categories). The same report notes that many managers fall short in encouraging and rewarding their employees’ use of talents. Recognizing talents is a hugely important part of success. Studies report that the difference between attributing success to talent and hard work as opposed to attributing success to hard work only can be as much as 70%!!
Look at it this way, it turns out that only 53% of employees overall trust their organization’s senior leaders and 75% overall trust their immediate managers, only 44% of disengaged employees trust their managers. It therefore becomes almost axiomatic that an effective alignment of employees’ values, goals and aspirations with those of the organization could help achieve the sustainable employee engagement required for an organization to reach its goals. You can conclude that whatever you can do to align people’s engagement with the direction of the enterprise is an absolutely rewarding goal.
You can’t get it wrong if you focus on caring for employees and others in your ‘bubble’. In 2020, we can see that committed, aligned, and passionate employees are good for the business. There is compelling evidence that goal alignment, caring managers, and a culture of respect and regard for one another is highly correlated with engagement and innovation.
These evidential, correlational reports add impetus to the urgency to study the relationship of ‘feeling cared for’ to engagement in the workplace.
TowersWatson reports that high engagement firms experienced Earnings Per Share (EPS) growth of 28% per year versus an 11.2% decline for low engagement firms.
Best Buy concludes that increasing a store’s employee engagement by 1/10th of a point on a 5 point scale will see a $100K increase in yearly sales.
JC Penny reports 36% more operating income from stores with engaged environments. MolsonCoors reportssafety related costs per employee decreases from $392 for disengaged workers to $63 per employee per year for engaged workers.
The problem remains, however, that managers cannot ‘manage’ someone else’s engagement. When it comes to getting ‘engagement’ from Gen-Y ers’, you can’t command it, demand it, or edict it. Engagement comes as a by-product of a caring work environment. You need to work on the caring part of the environment and reap the benefits of a more engaged work force.
The Cameron Group, Inc. 