Most efforts to enhance employee engagement remain focused on the outside—how the organization has to change in order to engage the workforce. Those efforts matter and must continue.
Nevertheless, the fact remains: Employee engagement is an individual responsibility. In the end, it is the inside story that tells the tale. You can provide me the most optimized environment, yet, if I choose not to be engaged, your efforts are in vain.
To paraphrase President Lincoln’s well known quip about happiness, “Most employees are about as engaged as they make up their minds to be.”
The Key to unlock and unleash employee engagement is to educate the mind that is making the ultimate decision—the mind making the choice to engage or not to engage. When those minds see the why, the whats and hows fall into place.
Minds change from within or they change not at all.