BUS603: Managing People

A manager's decision to work openly can impact a critical component of organizational life: employees' overall investment in and satisfaction with their work. I interviewed organizational psychology professional Tracy Giuliani to get a better sense of how and why this is the case.

Interview with Tracy Giuliani

Employee engagement is an oft-used term that carries several meanings depending on the context in which it's used. Tracy laughed when I asked "What is associate engagement?" - because "engagement" is such an awkward term. In addition, employee engagement means different things to different organizations; there's no agreement on one definition of "employee engagement," so organizations are developing it differently.

For our purposes here, the short-'n'-sweet of it is this: engagement is essentially a qualitative and quantitative understanding of the level of commitment between an employee and the organization or team with which they work. In fact, Tracy defines engagement as

Many factors influence the commitment an associate might have to the organization and its goals, so "engagement" is really describing a set or a system of things that impact an employee. (At Red Hat, we call employees "associates" to honor the important creative role they play in the organization's overall performance. I'll use the terms interchangeably). In addition, research on identity and inclusion suggests that individuals experience these impacts differently - so the "sets of things" can differ even within a team or organization.

In cases where engagement is high, associates:

• Are excited and passionate
• Use their discretionary attention to be more present and participate more, thereby increasing their creativity and performance
• Experience more "creative flow" with their work, due to the intersection of intrinsic motivation and interest
• Find their work meaningful and purposeful
• Have the support of both manager and team
• Work in a positive environment with support and psychological safety
• Experience two-way, mutual trust - not only do they trust in leadership and their vision, mission, and purpose, but they are trusted by their managers and leaders.
• Feel they have opportunities to grow
• Experience increased resilience and holistic well-being (in work and in life)

But to truly understand engagement, we must also look at the inter-employee meaning of these indicators. While having a high degree of all these factors is great (many of us want these things in our work lives), they're not a direct measure of engagement. They contribute to what could be engagement. (Remember Tracy laughing at my question, "What is associate engagement?" Now we know why! It's complicated!)

Note that the items on this list are typical, day-to-day experiences - frequent and consistent ways employees experience their work and work environments. They aren't one-off techniques, like an annual engagement event or survey. They're part of the everyday relationships employees have with others (like managers) and their work, which means they're things organizational leaders (like managers) need to work on every day.