Ever since I worked on my bachelor’s thesis about internal public relations at Volkswagen Slovakia, I’ve been interested in the dynamics of the relationship between a corporation and its employees. The topic has recently moved to the forefront of my attention, along with 12: The Elements of Great Managing.
A report on The Gallup Organization’s massive research, 12 distills the essentials of what makes for engaged employees. A truly engaged employee will agree with all of these statements:
- I know what is expected of me at work.
- I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
- At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
- In the last 7 days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
- My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person.
- There is someone at work who encourages my development.
- At work, my opinions seem to count.
- The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
- My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
- I have a best friend at work.
- In the last 6 months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
- This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
- Bonus: I am paid appropriately for the work I do.
To be sure, this seems straightforward, but as each chapter (and probably your experience as well) show, it also is extremely difficult to achieve. 12 will show you, occasionally with over-the-top narrative detail, why agreement on these matters and how to go about ensuring it. Good stuff, and a must-read for every manager, particularly one who wishes to build a socially sustainable company.
These days, I see employee relations and engagement as part of companies’ social sustainability, or People bottom line. You’ll be hard-pressed to find words like sustainability or green or environment or triple bottom line in 12. It would seem none of these are related to employee engagement. Yet that’s what The Green Workplace argues.
Part manifesto, part manual, The Green Workplace systematically outlines the process of greening your operations, work environment, and human resource management. Not much more can be said about such a detailed tutorial in itself.
What does beg analysis is the connection between employee engagement and corporate environmental sustainability. Is green important for employee engagement? Is employee engagement important in creating a green workplace?
Assuming there is a connection, two possibilities offer themselves.
- “My workplace is green” may be an element of engagement, but not important enough to appear among the top 12 elements of great managing.
- Environmental sustainability is part of one or more 12 elements.
Both may be true. Green can certainly play a role in employee engagement, but from a fairly low position on the list. The 12 elements of great managing seem so universal and crucial as to leave no room for environmental sustainability. Put another way, if one or more of the 12 elements is missing, integrating green into the workplace will do little to improve employee engagement.
If environmental sustainability is incorporated in the 12 elements, it would have little significance in and of itself. Most obviously, if a company’s mission and purpose include environmental sustainability, green would be part and parcel of employees feeling their jobs is important. For environmental sustainability to engage, every element of managing should incorporate green. For example, finding ever greener ways to do one’s job can be part of job expectations; opinions about greening the workplace can be made to count (and rewarded); or sustainability can be part of job performance feedback and professional development.
Social and environmental sustainability are certainly related, to each other and to financial sustainability. But one is not a necessary condition for any other.
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Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, PhD, 12: The Elements of Great Managing, New York: Gallup Press, 2006.
Leigh Stringer, The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment, and the Bottom Line, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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Our research shows that employee engagement and environmental sustainability can be integrally related. In my opinion, the questions outlined from the Gallop poll measure employee engagement only superficially. In those companies where employee empowerment is integrated int the culture and the way work gets done, employee engagement follows. These are the companies in which all aspects of the triple bottom line are integrated fully.
@Kathleen: I agree, engagement and environmental sustainability can certainly go hand in hand. It’s just a question of purposely meshing them together.
Though I’m not an expert in employee engagement, it seems — both in my experience and in the experience of others as I’ve observed it — the Gallup statements touch on its most important elements. Integrating employee engagement and empowerment in any company’s culture requires that employees agree with those statements. You can’t have one without the other.
Peter,
Thanks for the recommendation. I just ordered Stringer’s book.