Engagement: taking the leap
Tags: Employee Engagement, Philosophy, Autonomy, Meaning, Motivation

Engagement: taking the leap

Companies in the age of itchy feet

Austin Neill / Unsplash

By Anne-Sophie Moreau

As society gradually continues to grow into a cluster of independent individuals, companies increasingly struggle to get employees to be fully engaged at work. Work, once a lifelong occupation, is fast dissolving into a series of temporary and and abstract relations. Yet we still yearn for commitment, in love and at work. How can we rediscover a more tangible form and long-term form of freedom which, according to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, holds the key to self-fulfilment?

They say romantic love lasts three years. And at work? How many harsh words and rejected suggestions can you put up with before your enthusiasm implodes like a French soufflé? We’ve all been there: suddenly, you lose the will to give your best — if you ever had it in the first place… Of course, some alliances are merely circumstantial. Employees can be bound to employers for financial reasons, or because it’s in their interest to do so for the time being. Eternal bachelors have Tinder; slashers have their temporary contract. But at the end of the day, it’s hard not to expect anything from the work we do. You might well have negotiated a nice salary and told yourself to just “think about the money”; when you first show up at work, it’s hard to repress that jittery feeling that you might be happy this time, and that the old you, once sluggish and disengaged, might finally hatch into one of those radiant individuals who can’t wait to get to the office in the morning.

Flexible or loyal?

It’s therefore all the more disappointing when you realise, years, months, or even weeks down the line, that the thrill is gone… There can be several reasons for this. Boredom is one, as is the realisation that the organisation you initially believed was perfect is in fact full of flaws. But these particular cases shouldn’t distract us from a much wider upheaval, which is weakening the ties that hold employers and employees together: the world of work as we know it is breaking up. How can employees be loyal to one company when all they hear about is change and auto-entrepreneurship? Were they not told they’d need to change companies, and even professions, several times in the course of their life? Today’s ideal employee is first and foremost an “employable” one, i.e. someone capable of preparing their own exit when the time comes. It’s hard to imagine any long-term relationship when you’re busy shifting from one corner of the flexible office to another, briefcase in hand, wondering when AI will finally replace you all…

‘Today’s business leaders aren’t looking for mercenaries; they’re looking for loyal advisors’

You might think companies benefit from this new-found flexibility; but they too suffer from it. Companies might gain from giving some employees more autonomy — at the risk of demotivating others, and even disintegrating. Once invoked for economic reasons, flexibility is increasingly requested by employees themselves who, whilst stopping short of freelancing, are keen to choose their own hours and prompt to work from home. But be careful not to become too scattered… Faced with this massive centrifugal shift, modern organisations are now struggling to plug their own brain drains, while endemic turnover undermines employee initiative. In a world where consumers want to live differently, creativity is everything, as is the full commitment of employees, who can only save their employers from an uncertain future if they share the same desire to shape it. Today’s business leaders aren’t looking for mercenaries; they’re looking for loyal advisors. They’re not looking for pawns they can move around like in a game of Risk; they’re looking for people who are strong, demanding, capable of speaking their mind, and who will hopefully remain by their side in the long run. They need fully-fledged humans capable of taking a step back from the rational selfishness that today’s society is so keen to sell.

The rationality of laziness

So what is true employee engagement? Let’s take a closer look at some of the specific cases in which employees are said to be fully “engaged”. Of course, there will always be a few fanatics who recite their company’s values like a mantra and make a poster out of its organisation chart. But in everyday office life, engagement tends to be more discreet, for the simple reason that it can appear to be useless, and contrary to economic rationality.

‘The effort made by employees who are truly driven will often be of the invisible, intimate kind, far removed from any measurable performance’

A fully engaged worker is someone who spends just a little bit longer at work to make sure their client is happy, even if it means delaying another project; who takes the time to read a complicated book just to find ways of improving a product; and who won’t receive any immediate reward for their effort, because they largely go unseen. Engagement at work often takes the shape of a purely professional, and fundamentally disinterested conscientiousness. The effort made by employees who are truly driven will often be of the invisible, intimate kind, far removed from any measurable performance — which makes it all the more laudable. Disengaged workers, on the other hand, simply apply an efficiency principle which economists place at the heart of all rational behaviour: constrained optimisation. As functioning homo oeconomicus, they’ll minimise their effort as much as possible without compromising the result (keeping their job, being payed). In other words, a purely economic logic would have us do the strict minimum.

This is why employers are so easily tempted by systems of individual performance review and rewards. But it’s not hard to see how this approach which is supposed to address the problem only makes it worse. Why? Because it further reinforces society’s tendency to reduce individuals to mere monads driven by self-interest, and undermines the possibility that they might identify with a common goal. At the end of the day, quantitative measurements do nothing to encourage commitment. No matter how big they are, bonuses will never be able to replace the professional bond once it’s been damaged. When relationships break down — in love and at work — we turn to contracts. Nothing says “impending divorce” more than keeping tabs on who did the washing up… To approach the future with serenity we need to cultivate what we have in common, not quibble over who did what.

Diary of a job hopper

Individualism only makes the employer-employee relationship more strenuous. Yet both would gain from preserving this relationship. Like serial seducers, 21st century workers like to see themselves as free agents, but risk growing tired of the flirting joys of freelancing. As they grow bored of the infinite possibilities open to them, they can soon end up stuck in what Søren Kierkegaard called the “aesthetic stage”. In his Diary of a Seducer, the Danish philosopher acutely described the sense of despair that can result from the constant quest for novelty. It often comes with a feeling of anxiety that simmers under the surface of an ironic attitude — that distant demeanor you see in serial seducers and their professional counterpart, the “job hopper”. To live a fulfilled life, individuals must embrace what Kierkegaard calls the “ethical stage”: work towards a long-term goal, a lifetime project that will define one’s existence and give it substance, even if it does restrict the number of possible paths one can take. In other words, to commit. Kierkegaard saw the act of marriage as a perfect example of this sense of duty and responsibility which constitutes the ethical life. Freedom can’t remain an abstraction — it must take shape in a chosen path.

‘Companies need to grow into places where individuals find fulfilment by investing in real projects’

Does that mean irresolute auto-entrepreneurs would be better off jumping into permanent contracts? And show blind loyalty towards their employers, in spite of everyday trials and tribulations? For such a relationship to work, companies first need to reinvent themselves: they shouldn’t be prisons where workers get stuck; nor should they be mere crossroads where people come and go. They need to grow into places where individuals find fulfilment by investing in real projects — which means giving them a sense of responsibility which is often lacking elsewhere. Mature adults will readily give up on freedom if it is superficial and devoid of meaning — as long they gain true autonomy in the process.