Governance, Engagement and Motivation

Having the right engagement practices powered by understanding the drivers most meaningful to employees can work towards creating a more motivated and high-performing workforce.  Committing to an intentional culture that's open, transparent, and enables employees to thrive is important for retaining top performers.

This is a message being circulated by actual HR professionals in all kinds of forums.  It's working wonders in practice - look at Zappos or Google or, for a smaller-scale, closer-to-home example, Environics.

But it's largely being ignored here in Canada - especially in government and within Political Parties. The former considers itself a traditional institution, which justifies a resistance to change by far too many managers.  For the latter, well - there are so many people out there dying to work for Politics and the stakes are so high, the people in charge don't need to change - people need to adapt to them.

Is it widely recognized that government is an inefficient beast?  Yes it is.  Do Political Parties and reigning governments change regularly?  Yes, they do.  Yet the system remains stagnant.

Instead of trying to strengthen the team or grow leaders, the focus is on driving down negatives - firing under-performers, cutting departments that aren't meeting quota, reigning in activity to smaller, more siloed and over-worked teams.  This actually makes the problem worse.

What of employee retention?  It doesn't happen much, from what I've seen.  The worst example of "employee retention" I've seen is a political staffer declared "off limits" to outside employers, otherwise both firm and individual would be politically punished.

And motivation?

There is also the flip side to be considered, which is the "de-motivation" caused by the loss of belonging.  People who have had issues of disconnection, such as loss of a loved one, divorce, moving to a new town, or getting fired, experience massive ill effects on self confidence, focus and every other emotion.  At times they lose all motivation, period.

Government isn't about belonging.  It's not about people.  It's about services - not the people delivering them, not the people receiving them, just the services themselves.

It can and has to be so much better.  There's no way it can't reform, in the long run.  Getting there though is painfully frustrating and as a result, governments and civil services continue to fall below their maximum potential.

This isn't any one individual's fault - it's a systematic, culture-oriented problem.

But fault doesn't matter.  Fixing the problem does.  I guarantee that whichever leaders take it upon themselves to make this happen will win the most important prize of all - a legacy to be proud of.

It just so happens we'll all benefit as a result.

Which is the whole point of engagement, isn't it?