Autonomy, the key to engagement

Indian Institute of Management, Trichy recently hosted a HR conclave in Chennai. I was one of the speakers and focused on the theme of “redefining the culture for employee engagement”. Engaging employees’ hearts and souls beyond their intellect has become the key HR agenda for productivity and innovation. In fact, this rightly belongs to the CEO agenda. Like with many management concepts and practices, engagement in many organisations has also become one that is misunderstood.

The mistaken notions about engagement include interpreting this as “happiness” or “smiley faces.” Happiness at work is, of course, important. But when we discuss employee engagement, we are referring to passionate performance that engages customers and, thereby, delivers competitive advantage and financial performance. When it is narrowly defined as happiness, programs and investments reduce the engagement to entertainment as we see in many places today. Organisations’ efforts towards engagement are laudable. There are also several frameworks available from well-known consulting firms and these are based on sound research and practice. Nevertheless, more and more companies are finding it hard to accomplish.

Emperor’s new clothes

This reminds me of the story, The Emperor’s New Clothes , — publicly, everyone lauds the efforts loudly, but privately wonder ‘why can we not see the clothes?’ The state of engagement in many organisations is no different. Despite public stances by business leaders on inverting the pyramid and empowering people, the scene is still one of command and control. There is no dearth of intent. However, there is this overwhelming fear that anarchy would set in. When we talk of a culture of autonomy, we are not in any sense asking for anarchy, but policies that are founded on trust and self-responsibility.

I often give examples of two companies I worked for and how the sick leave policy was handled in both these companies. At IBM, I saw this at work and when I moved to Philips Software Centre as HR Head, I brought this policy to practice. Sick leave in both these organisations is based on “trust and honour system.” In simple terms, if you fall sick, you go on sick leave and there is no limit. How can anyone define for you, much less prescribe, how long you should be sick and therefore on sick leave? And this leave is with full salary, not leave without pay! After all, common sense dictates that when you are sick and unable to support yourself that is when you need your organization’s full support. Typically, there is a defined number of sick leaves for employees after which salary is put on hold, making the employee’s condition even worse!

But at IBM there were hardly any instances of employees misusing it. Employees only had it as an insurance, which they rarely misused. And if someone did misuse, it was not difficult to handle. This communicates a lot to the employees on how much their employers care and trust.

The secret sauce

Daniel Pink delivered a master message in his book, Drive , where he makes a powerful case for engaging and motivating employees through research-based solution for the nagging problem of engagement. It has three practices — mastery, autonomy and purpose. The focus of my piece is the second — autonomy. I am using empowerment and autonomy interchangeably since we are familiar with both the terms. Many years ago, Harvard Professor Chris Argyris had this to say about empowerment, “CEOs undermine this subtly; managers love this in theory, but the command-and-control model is what they trust and know best. For their part, employees are often ambivalent about empowerment.”

Management expert Gary Hamel has been very emphatic on why our management paradigms need to go through a sea change if we wish to harness the passion of the new age workforce. He said in his best seller, The Future of Management , “Asking a manager to manage a bit less is like asking a carpenter to pound fewer nails! Yet by oversight, the rigid plans, the comprehensive assessments, the strict policies, the mandatory procedures — in short, the whole “father-knows-the-best” premise of management — is antithetical to building companies that are filled with energetic, slightly rebellious votaries!”

A thriving workforce

Research by a team of professors at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, found that sustainable individual and organisational performance is a result of what they call “thriving workforce.” A thriving workforce is not just satisfied and productive, but also engaged in creating the future. They are highly energised, but also know how to avoid burnout, according to the researchers. A key recommendation from their research is “providing decision-making discretion” to the workforce.

Employee empowerment and democracy at workplace is still a pipe dream in most companies. Concern for control outvotes any voice for employee empowerment. If instituting is difficult, institutionalising a culture of autonomy and empowerment is even more challenging. After all, if it was easy, every business would have done it. Understandably, there is no single yellow-brick road to accomplishing the culture of empowerment. American psychologist Martin Seligman did seminal work in the area of “learned helplessness” and “learned optimism.” Even if organisations made an attempt to provide decision-making discretion to people on their rolls, it is going to be a difficult process for employees to adapt — for many decades now, they have “learned their helplessness.” Organisations need strong initiatives and mechanisms to change this reality and make power-to-people a new reality.

I can think of many good examples of empowerment and autonomy which the readers themselves would be familiar with. Some of these are:

IBM pays attention to the voice of their employees through what is now a well-established practice called “Values Jam.” Chairman of IBM runs this personally.

GE’s well-known “Workout” brutally roots out bureaucracy in the decision-making process and empowers people.

Google’s free time policy, too, is well known as a source of market-leading innovations.

Morning Star, a $600 million US company making tomato-pulp, has a “self-management” system that has eliminated “manager knows best” paradigm prevalent in many of our organisations.

Semco Corporation in Brazil is a standing testimony to how much workplace democracy one can have and still run a disciplined organisation.

Whole Foods Company in US has 93 per cent of company’s stock options with non-executives. Something most companies and managers cannot digest!

There are many more examples that are in the public domain. It is a combination of strong (and genuine) intent, combined with a strong will, that is required to create a culture of autonomy and empowerment. Impressive slogans on public platforms die as soon as than they are shared. Obviously, this denotes a massive culture change. But then, eventually, organisations with enlightened leaders will recognise that discipline and empowerment are not mutually exclusive. They actually thrive on each other.

(The author is an Executive Coach and HR Advisor to Corporate Houses.)

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