If they left their hearts at home, how much of their minds are you going to get?

Dieter Adam 18 March 2024

“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know… We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.” wrote the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 17^th century in an essay about the interplay between the intuitive and the mathematical mind. Building on that, and based on sometimes bitter experience in military and political campaigns, the concept of The Battle for the Hearts and Minds emerged, meaning that if you want to get people’s full (‘whole-hearted’) support, they’ll need to be emotionally engaged with your cause as well as supporting it in thought.

Gallop, an international workplace performance consultancy, regularly publishes the results of employee engagement surveys (https://www.gallup.com/394373/indicator-employee-engagement.aspx ); a summary of their latest results is shown above.

In manufacturing, the relationship between the emotional engagement of workers, in particular shop-floor (frontline) workers, and several drivers of productivity is well understood. A recent study (Oct. 2023) by PWC and the US Manufacturing Institute highlights the problem, analyses root causes, and provides recommendations for getting closer to best practice: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/industrial-products/library/manufacturing-talent-strategy.html Frontline worker absenteeism and attrition showed the strongest response to varying levels of engagement, followed by workplace health and safety incidents. In this study, based on employer self-reporting, almost half (48%) of respondents claim that most of their front-line workers are engaged, but another 26% have never done an engagement survey. Data from another study in US manufacturing from 2020 show similar results https://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/APA-Study_final.pdf , suggesting that engagement levels in US manufacturing are higher than the across-industries average.

A note of caution: Results from engagement surveys can vary a lot for the same target group. There is no generally-accepted standard method to assess worker engagement, and where results are based on self-reporting, there is always a risk of people giving the answer that they think is ‘right’, rather than the true answer. However, whatever the source of data, the results consistently report engagement levels well below what would be desirable.

For Australia and New Zealand, the Gallup survey data is as follows. Please note that this is across-industries data:

As we can see, the data for the two countries is similar, and close to global averages. It is worth noting that the ‘grey bit in the middle’ (‘Not Engaged’) is larger in New Zealand, with lower numbers at both extremes.

What is the definition of actively disengaged?

“Disengaged employees tend to not feel excited about their job or experience joy at the workplace. They lack motivation and inspiration and while they may fulfil their job tasks properly, they don’t put in any extra effort to help the organization reach its goals. Typically, disengaged employees need to be pushed to work. … This group openly dislikes their job and are quite vocal about making negative comments about the workplace and also speak negatively about it outside of work. They are often absent, have low energy, and exhibit a bad attitude. Gossiping and cynical humour are signs of active disengagement.” (https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-engage-a-disengaged-employee/ ). Sounds familiar?

And according to Gallup: “70% of the variance in team engagement [between high-and low-scoring operations] is determined solely by the manager.”

We manage the contributions of our machinery and equipment, and physical processes in general, to drive high levels of OEE, but often seem to accept that the ‘human element’ is at substantially sub-optimal performance levels – in spite of the solid evidence of the importance of active engagement for optimal performance overall. Attention needs to be given to people in all three groups. Encourage and reward those who are actively engaged, try to win over at least a good part of the ‘grey middle’, and deal with those actively disengaged, who can often have a detrimental impact on people around them. The tools for all of this are available and known to work – just look at the gap between ‘Average’ and ‘Best Practice’ in the first graph. They are not even very expensive to use, at least not in financial terms.