Improving Worker Engagement or Calculating Turnover
Putting the widget in the box may be a job. Today, mostly, this job is automated or is planned for automation soon. Is your organization improving worker engagement?
Things have unfolded rapidly in the past couple of decades.
Unemployment rates are currently trending low. Employers claim difficulty in finding employees and great employees claim finding great employers to be nearly impossible.
Putting widgets in the box doesn’t hold a very promising future. Retail commerce has made this a point. Self-checkouts, Amazon Go, and even McDonald’s restaurant franchises are changing how customers engage.
Automate the Future
Automation may reduce or even eliminate job positions as we once knew them.
The career minded person knows that putting widgets in the box is trending down.
Organizations may view it differently. Many traditional small privately-owned businesses insist on the old-fashioned way. They want to have easily replaceable and replicable workers.
Just put the widget in the box. Do it all day. Go home.
Certainly, we still have legitimate job opportunities that require this, and it isn’t all bad. However, the emerging (and existing) workforce sees this as a dead-end job.
Worker Engagement
It is true that organizational leadership can calculate big profits by dumbing down the work, hiring the least expensive workforce, and asking why turnover and hiring is problematic.
One obstacle with this model is, it doesn’t account for progress.
The model doesn’t take into consideration the cultural attributes of people. Most of all the model expects loyalty from those whose future in that job is as bright as a smoldering candle wick.
Here is an idea. Invite someone to join the team who is responsible to put the widget in the box. Then encourage them to find a way to improve, bring more value, or eliminate (automate) this job.
One job is a box packer, the other, an engineer.
-DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
