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Suddenly everyone is in the engagement business. As imitation is the sincerest form of flattery the individuals, businesses and organisations who have decided to use our name “Motivation Matters” for their business pay us a big compliment! Clearly many have little idea what they are about – snake oil salesmen who have never seen a snake! The “engagement” business is full of hype making a very simple concept incredibly complicated.
So let’s boil it down to the basics.
Engagement relates to the psychological contract between employer and employee.
Fundamentally it moves away from the idea of “economic man (or woman)” which even economists now recognise fails to predict much of human behaviour.
Instead of a “you chop a hundred logs I pay you one pound” contract the form is that “both parties will make their best endeavours for the other”, to do their best in a business setting.
Some organisations operate a hair trigger “fail and be fired” policy while others regard moving someone on to greener pastures as a catastrophic failure of organisational culture.
The model we promote is “tribal”. If someone has worked successfully for years and now needs leniency for a time you give it. If the tribe’s shepherd has kept everyone supplied with mutton for years but now has a performance issue, bear with it. He or she may well bounce back more committed than ever as they don’t want to let their tribe down.
Evicting the shepherd from his hut too quickly sends a terrible message to everyone. But then ignoring poor performance for a long time does too. The tribe need their mutton and this has to be balanced against hasty action.
The psychological contract allows people to have off days, domestic crises and still expect good treatment. Equally everyone knows that persistent poor performance will be dealt with for the good of all.
So everyone is doing their best as the psychological contract requires. Then the second part is to give people the wherewithal to innovate and the final part is to have senior people recognise that innovative improvement. This is to make people feel personally valued. They make extra discretionary effort, which is recognised again and round and round it goes.
 Look at the psychological contract:
“Each party will do its best for the other.”
Quite possibly the employer will not be able to respond to better performance immediately. There may be a competitive situation. Eventually that huge increase in performance will increase capacity, reduce costs or increase profits.
People are not stupid; they know what their efforts are achieving. A company I worked at had an unofficial meeting outside my office at the end of every month. By 4.10 pm the month end turnover figures were known to within a few percent.
The discretionary effort required by the psychological contract leads to better performance and consequently better reward. If the employer does not raise reward then the reasons must be well understood by all.
Organisations that achieve above average performance through the discretionary efforts of their motivated and engaged people will value their people above the average. Failure to do so breaks the psychological contract.
How do you explain not meeting above average performance with above average rewards? | 
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