« Buckle Up, We’re Taking A New Road | Main | Extreme Employee Engagement 2 »
Extreme Employee Engagement
By Ron | November 6, 2008
A guru in our field, used to say that the number one cause for unionization of your employees had nothing to do with money. They would say it was about money, but that was only a ruse. The real reason was: “We-They.” The instant I heard this, I knew it was true. Things in the world of work that cause division between people create an “us versus them” mentality and when we talk about the hip process of, “Employee Engagement,” it is then about one group trying to engage another group.
I thought back and remembered working on second shift when I was attending college. I was in a “We-They” situation then. Second shift employees thought of themselves as a separate entity. We disliked the people on first shift and wrote them off as people who caused us bottlenecks on our shift. We got things done faster and more efficiently because those bureaucrats weren’t in our way. Later on I noticed the “We-They” syndrome between plants. Each plant in the company I worked for had a different culture. When I transferred temporarily to another division, in a couple of days, I was one of them criticizing “those people” at the main site.
Hewlett Packard understood the issue right from the get-go. This was made apparent just in the design of their facilities. Nobody had offices. Both Hewlett and Packard worked in cubicles. Anyone could reserve one of the many conference rooms in the building to gain privacy or run a meeting. You couldn’t tell the difference between managers and employees because there wasn’t a “suit” in the place. And, way before it became trendy, they described ”The HP Way” right at the beginning of their journey so that everyone understood the vision, mission and values of the company. It was one big team; everyone was engaged. As HP expanded throughout the world, they made sure that every office was created in the same fashion. You could walk into any HP facility on the globe and know it was Hewlett Packard.
Next time, I’ll provide an audit checklist for attacking the “We-They“ syndrome and giving you a better chance at - Extreme Employee Engagement.
Topics: HR |