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THINK
70 •
PPB
• SEPTEMBER 2015
MANAGE EMPLOYEE ENERGY
TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT
THINK
BY JEN ALEXANDER
O YOUR ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS at work seem to backfire? Brady Wilson believes he knows why.
Wilson, who has dubbed himself the Human Energy Architect, believes the more companies focus on
engagement, the more they drain employee productivity. His book,
Beyond Engagement: A Brain-Based
Approach That Blends the Engagement Managers Want with the Energy Employees Need
, presents leadership principles for
managing energy, and the science behind them.
Looking at how the brain processes employee engagement, Wilson and his team at Juice Inc., discovered that when an
individual lacks energy, specific cognitive functions diminish: the ability to predict outcomes, focus, regulate emotions and
initiate action. The result is a drop in innovation and value creation.
“Why does this matter?”Wilson asks. “The customer experience is entirely at the
mercy of the employee experience. And customers want a human experience—-they
want to experience a brand at an
emotional
level. Yet, depleted of energy, employees
will provide customer service in an impersonal, mechanical and transactional way.”
Wilson says when engagement initiatives focus on unlocking discretionary effort rather than on generating energy,
employees work harder and longer, but all they’re doing is putting out fires when they could be creating solutions that pre-
vent fires in the first place.
Employers who focus on energy also acknowledge that employees respond to engagement emotionally, rather than
rationally. The emotional aspect is a focus of the book’s principles, one of which asks managers to partner with employees,
rather than act as a parent. Instead of assuming employees have deficiencies that need to be overcome, leaders should
approach workers as peers who can collaborate on success and hold one another accountable.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
D
FAST FORWARD
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