Is anyone else tired of “employee engagement”?
Is anyone else tired of “employee engagement”?
I am so sick of employee engagement surveys and the resulting exercise in futility around soliciting changes that never get made. It’s honestly one of the more evil and deceitful processes that capitalism and academia have ever teamed up to create.
I just got invited to a staff BBQ at the manager's house. It's at 5PM. On Friday. I just spent 50 hours this week with you guys! Wasn't that enough?
I always get super triggered at the "Do you have a best friend at work?" question that my old organization used to roll out during engagement planning. No, you motherfuckers, I already have a best friend. They don't happen to work here.
So I answer no every single time. And then in the interview afterward they go on about how "well, it's not LITERALLY if your best friend works here. The survey just asks the question like that because blah blah blah...". Trying to over examine what it means to "have a best friend at work". To interpret that question in some other way to maybe get me to answer yes next year.
I don't care what the intent behind the question is, they will never convince me to not answer "no", unless my best friend happens to join our team. I feel like they're trying to gaslight me into feeling more connected to the team or some bullshit. Drives me up the fucking wall.
You're doing the right thing. They're just trying to juice their own numbers by pressuring you to say something effusive.
I went HAM on my most recent one. They’re anonymous but I’m sure my direct manager can tell my writing style. But the place I work for has been in refusing to do any hiring including backfills so now I’m a team of 1 doing what 7 people used to do and I let them know I’m not pleased.
Just FYI, they’re not really anonymous. These surveys get reported back to each individual manager with the responses, ratings given, and counts of staff completed; so it is very easy for managers to discern who wrote what.
I figure they aren’t. I didn’t curse or name anyone by name, I just made it pretty clear that the understaffing is job performance at a pretty severe level and that the workload has everyone miserable
True employee engagement is Unionization.
Effective, sure. But, if a company is truly engaging, listening, adapting to the employees needs and feedback, unions would be a lot less needed or effective. When companies are exploiting workers, lowering wages and benefits, causing more problems and not listening to employees, unions can really make a huge difference. If the people are looking to unionize, the company is failing and the workers aren't being listened to and they want change to happen.
Unions can do a lot of good. I'm very pro-union. But, people don't go looking to unionize if things are going great and the company is really listening and adapting to employee concerns.
I just tell them my opinions on business matters aren't free.