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Morale Comes Back From the Dead

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Let’s face it, the only people who use the word “engagement” about their workforce are those who read this feed here, on LinkedIn or the Employee Engagement Network, HR professionals and consultants who are part of the engagement “industry” and their clients.   I admit, I am one of those consultants.  Back and forward we go, trying to decide what it is, how high or low it is, and what to do about it.  But outside our echo chamber, what do people say?  They talk about “morale”.   It’s happening all the time now:  I hear the word “morale” come from the mouths of TV business news anchors and guests;  I read it in the Wall Street Journal and other business publications.  Morale isn’t dead, it has emerged from its coffin to live another day….maybe another few decades.  I do not hear the word “engagement” despite the fact that that is meant to be the greatest invention since sliced bread and color TV.  Morale has just lost favor with a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.  The rest know what it is, what it means and what the consequences are of not having it.  They know because the military has always used the word, and there they bend over backwards to make sure it stays high.  The press uses the word, so does the general public.  Only the limited number of us here and in academia have dumped the idea for something “new”….engagement.

So let me make the case for a return to morale as at least an equal, and in some ways a superior, concept to engagement:

Clients Don’t Care:

The first argument for morale is that, unlike all us passionate people here who easily get wedded to an idea like engagement, our clients often don’t care what we call “it”.  As many have said to me as I transitioned over many years from climate and satisfaction and other concepts to morale and engagement (and back):  “David I don’t care what you call it, I just want to know how our people are doing“.  If that is the case, and I think it is, why don’t we just use something which has very little baggage and works as well or better than engagement?

Easy to Define:

Its all about psychological well being, feeling good at work.  What could be easier than that?  The French can define it with just three words:  “esprit de corps“.

Easy to Measure:

Put together a questionnaire which covers all kinds of things we encounter at work.  Do we like what we see there?  Our boss?  Our working conditions?  The way we are treated?  The product(s) or service(s) our organization delivers?  Do we understand our role, how we contribute to the big picture?  Would we recommend this as a place to work or with which to do business?  All these things are going to affect or reflect our morale, its not complicated.  Morale questionnaires like this, one of which I have used for a long time, have been around for ever;  they have long since been heavily validated and we know they work.

A Driver of Performance:

No one doubts that this connection between morale and performance is real, it is so real in the public mind that it forms what we call “common sense”.  Yet we argue endlessly in places like this about whether engagement has such an effect.   In fact, research confirms that morale predicts…drives…performance.  I don’t just say this, I studied it at length and co-wrote a whole book about it.  Morale is a powerful concept.  Research says that engagement does too, but it depends on how you define and measure it.   So was engagement a step forward from what came before?  Gallup says that its Q12 engagement questionnaire is very highly correlated with a single question on satisfaction at work:  so you could use that single question, and probably have as good a predictor of performance as the entire Q12.  Where is the improvement?

Morale Avoids Engagement’s Embarrassing Problems:

Let’s be honest here;  engagement has become an embarrassment.  Why do I say that?  Because we can’t agree on what it is, and as a result we go to market with endlessly different questionnaires which produce hugely different engagement databasesI have documented this huge problem here.  Gallup, Aon, HayGroup, TowersWatson,  giants of our industry, can’t agree on engagement levels.  Recently, I started to write an article on engagement in Germany based on Gallup data:  it said that it was very, very low….among the worst in Europe.  When I finished and was about to publish it, I happened upon an article by HayGroup (where I used to work) that said that Germany had among the highest engagement levels in Europe.  I scrapped the article.  I mean, really….what can we trust?

I know the pushback arguments:  engagement is an action verb, morale doesn’t handle that, it only measures an inner state which is no guarantee of any action.  But look in a dictionary and you will see that morale is related to making extra effort and has been seen that way for a long time.   I know, “engagement” excites people, they like the word.   I like the word.  But is that a reason to stay exclusively with an idea which is so poorly defined and measured that even its most celebrated practitioners don’t agree on how high or low it is?   I am not saying dump engagement, I just think morale deserves a prominent place at the head table.  Maybe we need to get back to basics, something many clients understand perfectly and which stands up extremely well to comparison with any sexy competitor:  good, old fashioned but as current as ever….morale.

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For more about my work as a speaker, author, consultant and researcher in work morale, engagement, culture and emotional intelligence, please visit my website at: http://www.davidbowlesphd.com

(Picture By Robert Lawton (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons)

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LinkedIn profile/contact: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbowlesphd


Filed under: @profcarycooper, @psych4biz, Cary Cooper, customer satisfaction, David Bowles Ph.D., employee engagement and customer satisfaction, Employee Engagement Network, employee morale, employee morale surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, employee survey myths, enagagement benchmark, engagement and product quality, engagement benchmark, engagement myths, engagement surveys, Gallup, Gallup Q12, German worker engagement, happiness at work, HayGroup, High Engagement, human resources, internal ranking on engagement, internal vs external benchmarking of employee data, leadership, morale, morale and customer satisfaction, morale and performance, morale and productivity, morale and profitability, morale and workforce performance, morale and workplace performance, morale as "mission critical", morale as competitive edge, morale benchmark, morale surveys, Professor Sir Cary Cooper, TowersWatson, Uncategorized, WatsonWyatt, work performance and employee morale, worker engagement and performance Tagged: #employeeengagement, @profcarycooper, @psych4biz, David Bowles Ph.D., employee engagement, employee morale, engagement, engagement and happiness, engagement and performance, engagement vs. morale, European engagement, German engagement, German morale, happiness and engagement at work, happiness at work, high engagement, high engagement work culture, high workforce morale, HR, human resources, leadership, management, management and employee engagement, management and high employee morale, morale, morale and engagement, morale and performance, morale and profitability, workforce morale, workplace morale

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