The Dark Side of Employee Engagement
Most Human Resources experts will point-blank claim that employee engagement, or the rate at which employees are devoted to their jobs, is critical to the success of the organisation.
Employees that are highly engaged in their jobs are also known as fully here. They are known to be completely devoted, always attentive, and focused in their roles. This is a trait that modern organisations are vying for in their workforce.
Employee engagement has become more than a trend in HR, it is now a requirement in almost every organisation. Most employees tend to perform better with a higher level of engagement. However, engagement doesn’t deliver in all cases.
For recruits, the connection between engagement and results is far from perfect. In other words, engaged individuals and teams don’t deliver as expected. In the same vein, employers may discover that their most engaged individuals or teams are often the least satisfied.
An plausible explanation is that while engagement is critical in deterring performance, performance may also be affected by certain factors, which may be more important than engagement.
Clear Goals, Sense of Purpose
Clear goals, a sense of purpose, and safe and open team values are the primary drivers of an effective team. More so, decision-making and leaders’ judgment may significantly impact individual and team performance more than engagement.
It is also agreeable that employee engagement can hinder a more effective performance when employees become too obsessed with engagement. When employees become bent on getting along, they forget about moving ahead.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong revealed that while employee engagement has always led to higher job efficiency, it also leads to employees hoarding information, being territorial, and other unethical behaviour in general.
At one point or another, we must have heard that employee engagement has a dark side. Being overly focused on engagement may lead to neglecting other important factors determining organisational and individual success. After intense research, we were able to discover what we classify as the dark side of employee engagement, and in this post, we shall be discussing them.
5 Negative Ways Employee Engagement Can Affect Organisational Performance
In as much as it is proven and generally accepted that employee engagement can increase performance and boost retention, there is also proof of the dark side of employee engagement which may result in disappointments and a list of negativities.
A highly effective workforce can lead to innovation, increase productivity and give organisations an edge over their rivals in the industry. However, the secret to recruiting and retaining such a workforce is employee engagement. When overdone, it could result in some adverse effects. These effects will take a toll on both employees and employers.
So, what is the dark side of employee engagement?
1. Complacency
When discussing the dark side of high employee engagement, the most prevalent of them is complacency, or what some HR experts may call embracing the status quo.
Yes, high employee engagement may motivate employees. Similarly, they may get too comfortable with it, assume the status quo, and reduce innovation and performance. When you appreciate employees with incentives even for the smallest efforts, they may feel over-satisfied and less motivated to make more effort. Furthermore, studies reveal that pride and over-optimism may result in resistance to innovation and evolution.
For example, suppose an organisation is used to operating with particular software for years. When a better alternative for that software is available, they may be hesitant or even resistant to change and upgrade it just to avoid leaving their comfort zone. We have seen cases when scenarios like this turn a booming organisation stagnant.
2. Psychological Ownership
Researchers explained that when employees are highly engaged in their job, they identify with it and treat it like it is their identity. In psychology, this situation is called extended self.
The result here is the employee’s sense of ownership over the job. However, there is a good side to psychological ownership as it is known to promote organisational citizenship behaviour.
Organisational citizenship behaviour refers to employees’ performance, proactiveness and willingness to go above and to extremes in executing their job assignments.
The dark side of psychological ownership is employees’ resentment when colleagues intrude or invade their space. In some cases, it leads to territorial behaviour and hoarding of information.
For instance, suppose an employee is influenced by psychological ownership. In that case, they may decide not to share product or customer information, skills, tips and many result-effective trends to help another colleague promote sales.
More so, psychological ownership may also result in pro-job unethical behaviour. Pro-job unethical behaviour is when an organisation endorses or involves in activities that may benefit it but are not recognized as fair play. A perfect example here is discrediting the effort and performance of others or deliberating blackballing another employee.
More so, there are claims that the depth of psychological ownership depends on the employee’s mindset. They argued that employees driven by a desire to reach specific goals tend to focus on the benefits of the ownership of their job.
3. Faster Rate of Burnouts
Here, we have one of the most common effects of the dark side of employee engagement. In cases where employees are highly engaged, they tend to become so involved and divert all focus to the job to the extent it affects every other important part of their lives.
Studies show us that highly engaged employees are more likely to suffer work/family interference, and those who get too involved in their work and fail to take downtime or recess may end up harming their health.
Obviously, extra hours and extra effort contribute to individual growth and the organisation’s growth. Besides, it is essential in reducing employee turnover; but if not well managed, it could have some inevitable risks. Even if most organisations in the industry may desire a few or more workaholics within their workforce, this prospect reveals the importance of considering the long-term well-being of employees as it is vital to the company’s long-term health.
When employees become highly engaged, they may go as far as sacrificing family time or personal time or even their health for their jobs. This eventually adds to the already high burnout rate due to physical and mental over-attachment to their jobs. Signs of burnout include lack of enthusiasm, exhaustion and low performance – all of which can affect the organisation’s overall performance.
4. Unfairly Prioritising Some Personalities Over Others
In today’s industry, the expectations from employees are beyond what they used to be, and with the changing role of HR, these expectations are, even more, making the case worse. Although a greater percentage of HR in today’s industry will disagree that engagement is not only driven by situational factors, it is also determined by the individual’s personality. We have seen cases where it is not as such.
To cut down their workload and increase engagement scores, these organisations may favour optimistic, extroverted, agreeable, emotionally stable and positive individuals over pessimistic, introverted, moody, or demanding individuals. Let me make it simpler.
Suppose Amazon or TripAdvisor only had optimistic, agreeable, positive comments in their reviews. In that case, they will have higher ratings, but the higher ratings are however not proportionate to higher service quality or better customer experience.
Accepting that having diverse personalities in your workforce is vital in the development and growth of your enterprise. For instance, a highly engaged employee, say a service staff, may help in boosting the quality of service, customer experience and satisfaction. However, when it comes to an employee with an innovative or more complex task, high employee engagement may be somewhat insignificant. In fact, a show of restiveness may produce a better result here.
5. Undermining the Effects of the Benefit of Negative Thoughts
Yes, positive thinking indeed brings about openness and creativity. Similarly, pessimistic, negative and critical thinking can result in focus and attention. To this end, negative and critical thinking may be more efficient problem solvers than positive thoughts as they tend to view things from a more critical perspective.
Furthermore, employees under a moderate or controlled degree of stress may be more focused and productive, leading to better performance. Literature shows that individuals with a negative mood are most times more consistent and purposeful than those who are always positive.
Although the trend in the industry today is focusing on the good parts to boost employee engagement and morale, it is essential not to undermine the effects of the benefits of negative and critical thoughts. For instance, the defensive pessimist may produce better results if they put more effort into preparations and work harder. Similarly, individuals who question themselves are more motivated to reach the desired goal.
Conclusion
The need to find equilibrium in employee engagement is critical. Managers and HR must be creative about offsetting just the right amount of tension and pressure in their workforce to trigger healthy competition and breed motivation within the workforce. A dark side of high employee engagement can have various negative effects on an organisation’s performance and culture. To this end, every team leader or employer must bridge every gap in employee engagement that leads to a dark side.
Author Bio
George Relish is the Editorial Director at Quidable. Before starting his work at Quidable, he was a bank auditor for over 5 years. He is passionate about reading science fiction, travelling, and football.
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