By Oscar Johnson
Do you, the company, take this employee - in sickness and in health - to be your lawfully wedded spouse, till death do you part? Do you, the newly hired, take this company to be yours, till retirement do you part? If this nuptial notion sends chills so far down your spine as to give you cold feet you’re not alone.
These days, fewer Japanese firms - and workers - are wedded to the idea. It’s no wonder; social and economic shifts doom such relations before the first date. The rise in “freeters”, or mercenary part-time-temp workers, for example, has employers eyeing potential suitors with increased suspicion. As firms flirt with outsourcing and other labor-cost cuts, workers are wont to question corporate fidelity. What’s worse is when this loss of faith - or faithfulness - seeps from the job market to the workplace.
No matter which side of the aisle to career-corporate union we’re on, we all know the story: The new hire is eager to learn and do his or her part. Then the honeymoon ends; enthusiasm wanes. Murmured nicknames for managers and departments grow less humorous as the newbie starts to learn, first hand, why they’re so christened. At best, he or she becomes an adequate but uninspired cog in the machine. Worst-case scenario: A bane to clients or a drag on productivity. What’s a manager to do? Get your workers engaged – not necessarily to the company – but in their jobs. It’s a bigger problem than you may think.
A measly 9 percent of Japanese employees are “engaged,” or committed to their jobs and companies, according to a 2005 Gallup poll. The figure is among the lowest ever assessed by Gallup and ties Singapore’s for the lowest in the Asia/Pacific region. It shows that 67 percent of Japanese workers are "not engaged," or interested in their jobs. The other 24 percent are "actively disengaged"; disgruntled malcontents behind turnovers, poor customer service, quality defects, theft and accounting fraud. Japan loses an estimated 26 trillion yen annually because of them.
Employers that wonder how to get staff more engaged may be hard pressed for ideas to motivate them. Therein lies the problem, according to experts. They say getting workers keen on their jobs entails more than a top-down authoritarian approach. It starts with managers learning staffers' interests. Know your employees’ professional goals, stressors, ideas of success or simply if they have what they need to do their jobs. The best way to do that is to start asking. Armed with this knowledge, key staffing and assignment decisions can be made that best use individual strengths - and spark interests in the work at hand. Showing a consistent long-term interest in employees’ professional lives can also be a great motivator.
Communication is another key. There should be no room for doubt about your company’s mission, ethics and procedures, as well as each employee’s role in implementing them. There are few things more frustrating about a job than vague responsibilities, and guidelines. In order to feel like a successful part of a team, members need tangible standards to measure up to. This, say the experts, is achieved by clearly communicating this information to staff. Encouraging employees to communicate with managers and coworkers to resolve office tensions and conflicts is also a boon. If these kinds of issues staunch communication in your workplace mediation or training in conflict resolution may be in order.
Consistency is also essential to getting workers more engaged. Without it, experts say, all efforts may come to naught - or even backfire. A company I worked at, for example, had the traditional morning meeting in which division heads droned on about their daily agendas. A newly promoted manager once announced that from thenceforth the affair would no longer consist of top-down monologues. Questions would be encouraged from the captive audience. That was the start, and unfortunately the end, of his attempt to get us engaged. In the end, the half-hearted effort only served to further demoralize staffers.
This now-demoted manager, however, did have the right idea, according to Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, authors of "Now, Discover Your Strengths." It’s virtually impossible for most people to engage in work when they can’t influence the outcome. Staff meetings in which participants are only expected to listen, they say, are an example of what can discourage employees from engaging in their work. The knack of skillful leadership is to rally the team spirit, while also encouraging members to take a stake in planning and achieving mutual goals. Soliciting employees’ input - and taking it to heart - is a great way to do that. It may even rekindle, if not sustain, the newlywed enthusiasm of a new hire.
To see the complete Gallup poll on Japan’s unengaged workforce check out “Grim News for Japan’s managers” at: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/default.asp?ci=17242. For pointers on getting employees more engaged see JoAnna Brandi’s “9 Ways to Keep Employees Engaged” at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,320810,00.html.
