When employees are disengaged, the organization needs to take this as very valuable feedback on various aspects of working there including management culture, working environment, team/organizational identity and pride, and value among many others.

1. Employee Engagement - tips to empowering your employees to choose ‘engaged’
In my last article, I explored the need for a new, practical definition of employee
engagement where the individual employee is the key component within the larger
employee engagement equation. I also explained how this definition has provided the focus
for our approach to engaging employees and for the Etimes2 Engagement Building Platform.
I finished my article by talking about the importance of cultivating the ground on which you
intend to sow the seeds of engagement. In other words, we need to get each individual
involved and taking some responsibility for their own engagement levels. This is not to say
the individual has caused themselves to be disengaged (the biggest causes are typically line
management and organisational culture).
Why do you need to ‘cultivate the ground’ – you have an engagement strategy in place?
As explained in my previous article, employees who are less than engaged have developed a
set of learned behaviours and expectations at work. For example, if their experience is that
they are never listened to, why would they expect this to change now? A top down
engagement strategy, no matter how good it is, will struggle to change these perceptions. It
is these very perceptions that cause the individual to look at the strategy and think
something like ‘so what’, ‘another one, as if the last one made a difference’ etc.
Only the individual employee can decide to give the top down engagement strategy a fair
chance or to be more productive, or contribute more. This suggests that there is a shared
responsibility in developing an engaged workforce – shared between the individual and his/
her employer. This shared responsibility is to build engagement. Responsibility for the
cause of disengagement isn’t shared so readily, however.
When employees are disengaged, the organisation needs to take this as very valuable
feedback on various aspects of working there including management culture, working
environment, team/organisational identity and pride, and value among many others. We
will look at this closer in a future article because it is an important issue where your
approach could either build engagement or drive it beyond recovery. The key point to make

2. here is that the organisation needs to take full responsibility for disengagement being
present and seek to identify the causes – pointing the finger of blame is only going to create
more disengagement. Then the organisation can start to put measures in place to rectify
the engagement issues and work on providing an environment where individuals can feel
comfortable in taking some responsibility for their own engagement.
So, how do you create an environment where employees are able and prepared to take
some responsibility? The five steps outlined below are good first steps along this path as
they outline how you need to approach engagement and how it needs to be embedded
within the DNA of your organisation rather than simply being something that is good to do
for now. Your commitment to employee engagement will impact on the success of your
engagement strategies.
The bottom line of all this is you want as many of your employees as possible to choose
“engaged”. This choice will be a decision to put in a little extra effort or, to approach work
more positively and not focus on the negatives, or simply to view the company engagement
strategy without scepticism. There are many forms this choice can take. The form each
person chooses doesn’t matter that much. What matters most is that the choice to be more
engaged reflects even a small step change in the individual’s perception of what it is like to
work for your organisation, how they are valued and the role they play in its success. This
perception is key.
5 Steps to Cultivate the Ground
1. Engagement is an ethos, not a strategy
Building an engaged workforce is best when the commitment to engagement runs
deeper within the DNA of the company. The engaged ethos is about an honest and
sincere belief in the value and ability of your employees and their commitment to
the company. The building of an engaged workforce starts in earnest when
employees can see this belief. All the other things linked to your strategy – e.g. a
pool table, hanging out together and so on – are fun and good. They don’t mean a
thing, however, if employees don’t feel valued.
2. Engagement is a personal experience
It is vital to understand and accept that each person’s engagement with their
employer is personal. It is based on the individual’s experience of the working
environment to date. A successful engagement strategy needs to find a way to tap
into these individual perceptions and feelings and enable the organisation to learn
from them. Etimes2 provides our clients with an engagement building platform that

3. builds engagement at an individual level, giving our clients the tools to tap into
individual perceptions and impact on these.
3. Not a one size fits all
Leading on from engagement being a very personal experience, it is clear that a one
size fits all engagement strategy will have limited impact. People are unique and a
one size fits all strategy will have its impact limited by individual perception and
experiences. People also like to feel that they have some control over how we feel
and how we work. Therefore, the strategy needs to consider how the organisation
can connect with individuals throughout the workforce and develop an approach to
engagement that answers the “what’s in it for me?” question. If you can do this,
perhaps by giving individuals more chance to contribute to decision making and
problem solving and enhancing how you communicate, then you are starting to tap
into the individual. We all want to feel valued, important and that our contribution
matters. We all like to be asked.
4. The engagement ethos starts with communication
It is about honest and sincere communications and giving individual employees
opportunities to get involved and contribute to success. Some of the key elements
within your engagement strategy dealing with communication is how authentic and
sincere communications are. Are you communicating what you are going to do?
The authenticity and sincerity of your communications is the first step to giving
individual employees new positive experiences. These positive experiences will build
their efficacy at work and start altering their perception to one of ‘you know, this
might just offer me something or I’ll give it a go’ rather than 'so what'.
5. Make it easy for people to get involved and contribute
What makes people intrinsically engaged and happy at work?
Is it a pool table?
Or the permission to decorate their workstation?
Not really. These type of activities and provision are fun and add to a happy
environment. However, if you are sitting at your brightly decorated desk looking
forward to a game of pool at lunchtime, but you still get the feeling that you are just
a number with little value, then you are unlikely to be intrinsically engaged. These
activities don’t create an engaged environment.
Your engagement strategy needs to make it easy for people to get involved, to give
their opinion, and feel that they make a valuable contribution to the success of their
organisation – not just in terms of the work they do and number of units produced.
But also in how they contribute to decision making and problem solving in the
organisation. Your engagement strategy needs to exist for the purpose of
intrinsically connecting your employees to your organisation and to empower them
to make greater contributions to your success. Fortunately, technology, like
Etimes2, has made this possible and relatively simple to achieve.

4. How does your employee engagement strategy connect individual employees to the
organisation and drive greater contribution?
Nigel McPolin is the creator and founder of Etimes2, an Engagement Building Platform that
drives sustained behaviour, engagement and performance throughout the organisation.
Visit www.etimes2.com for more information and a free trial.