In general, human beings are really good at solving complex problems involving things but terrible at solving complex problems involving people.
We keep getting better at making cars, computers, fishing rods, and houses, but would anyone say that we keep getting better at politics? And what about workplaces? Are the workplaces where we keep making better things any better to work at?
Companies spend billions of dollars hiring and training the best people they can and then struggle to retain them or to get the most out of them. Why is that?
On the one hand, it's puzzling, because we know, based on thousands of studies of organizations where people are highly focused, productive, and happy, that engagement comes down to three big things: relationships, agency, and purpose. (I use the acronym RAP.)
On the other hand, each of these things is hard to focus on consistently, and, because people differ so much from one another, they require constant attention.
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Consider relationships in the workplace. Having good relationships with one's supervisor and coworkers is key. If you like and respect the people you are working with, you are likely to enjoy spending time at work. But supervisors often get promoted into their roles because they are very good at tasks, not because they are good at understanding and relating to other people.
I recently toured a factory with someone who is an excellent supervisor. As we walked through the building he greeted each person by name. He wasn't just showing me what products they made there; he was telling me about the people who made them. The key thing that makes him such a good supervisor is that he really cares about people. He finds them interesting. He wants to know about their children and their hobbies and their struggles. Sometimes thinking about their struggles keeps him up at night.
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Caring about other people and finding them interesting isn't a skill, it's an attitude. Without that attitude, it's very difficult to improve relationships.
The second condition of high engagement is agency, which is the ability to have some say over how one does the job. I toured a call center once that had difficulty hiring workers and even more difficulty retaining them once hired. Workers told me they were penalized for bad outcomes over which they had no control. The manager was frustrated because he had no authority to change the ways employees were evaluated. The result was that everyone in the organization felt disempowered and quit putting much effort into their work. That's what happens when people lack agency.
Contrast that with another organization I visited that held short "meet ups" every morning just to check in with everyone. They talked about their successes and challenges from the day before, discussed what they could do better, listened to suggestions for improvement. That didn't mean everybody got to do whatever they liked, but everyone was heard. And if somebody had a good idea, they were encouraged to act on it.
The final component of engagement is purpose. You would think that this is where organizations that have a strong prosocial mission would excel, places like schools, hospitals, universities, and charitable organizations. But that's not always the case.
For several years I served as an outside evaluator of organizations applying for a highly regarded recognition. I was able to review detailed information about hundreds of companies, from manufacturers to health care organizations to grocery stores. One of the biggest surprises was discovering that many organizations with strong intrinsic missions seemed to take purpose for granted. Their marketing materials highlighted their mission, but their training materials largely neglected it.
Leaders within those organizations assumed that since their overall mission was to do something good for the community that employees would automatically be motivated by the purpose of their work in fulfilling that mission. That was not the case.
The organizations that addressed purpose most explicitly and thoroughly were almost always for-profit companies. The supervisors in those companies took great care to emphasize the ways in which each job contributed to the well-being of the company as a whole and of all the employees who worked there. They encouraged volunteer activities in the community and highlighted stories of employees who went out of their way to help customers.
Relationships, agency, and purpose are easy to describe but difficult to do well. When you work for an organization that gets it, there's nothing better. When you work for an organization that doesn't, there's nothing worse.
Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His new book, "Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way)," is available from Fulcrum Books. He also cohosts "The Ethical Life" podcast.
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