Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the blog written by members ofHuman Resources UK.
Today we have a rather timely article about engagement. It won’t have escaped your attention we’reall engaging closely at the moment with the demand for networking events. We now have confirmed events for London,Newbury, Bristol, Birmingham and Gateshead. So we’re all engaging with each other, but Sheena McLullich discussestoday whether we can engage too much with our employer and be too close forcomfort. (EdScrivener)
Too closefor comfort?
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| Sheena hummed "I'll do anything" all day long |
I had lunch a few weeks ago with a former colleague. Although we hadn’t seen each other for overtwo years, we’d worked together in the same company for several yearspreviously, so we had a lot of catching up to do. After exchanging all the family news andupdating each other on our respective careers, the conversation turned to thecompany we’d both worked for.
Without going into too much detail, we had worked for a smallcompany which had grown rapidly over five years or so and had undergonesignificant changes, including a change of ownership, before being bought overby a multi-national a couple of years ago.
We’d worked very closely (and very successfully) together on anumber of key initiatives for the growing business. It had been an exhilarating, and sometimesexhausting, time often involving long hours, last minute changes and jugglingseveral conflicting imperatives in very tight timescales. We were part of a close-knit senior managementteam who all got on well together, socially and professionally, and no-onereally complained about the sometimes challenging environment we foundourselves in.
Over lunch, we had a lot of fun reminiscing about the people we’dworked with and some of the more bizarre events that had taken place. There was the time when, owing to a clericalerror, everyone had been paid twice (yes, really!) The day we’d watched a whale swimming up theThames right in front of the office, the night out when …. I could go on, but Ireally ought to spare the blushes of any of our former colleagues who may bereading this!!
We both left the company for different, but compelling, reasonsseveral months apart. However, I wasintrigued to discover that we’d both experienced a huge sense of loss at thetime of our respective departures and that this had also been experienced byother senior colleagues who had left the same company before and since. Why was this? We talked about it for a while and came tothe conclusion that we had probably all been too close to the business.
A case of ‘extreme engagement’ perhaps? Employee engagement is a stated aim of mostorganisations and we were all totally committed to ‘our’ company. It was never questioned or articulated but wewould all do whatever it took to get the job done with the resources we had atour disposal – and if we didn’t have the resource, we simply did itourselves. Discretionary effort and‘going the extra mile’ was probably never considered by any of us. In all the whirlwind of dealing with constantchange and growth challenges, we just got on with things and never reallyquestioned why we were working so hard and what the end result would actuallybe.
Now that I’ve had time to reflect however, I think that there wasa significant downside. For severalweeks after I left I often found myself thinking deeply about my previous role,what had gone well, what I could have done differently, wondering what washappening, whether I was being missed, whether …
It was very difficult for me to ‘let go’ even though I had made mydecision to leave several months before I actually did so. I had made such a strong emotional investmentin the business that I couldn’t simply break the attachment overnight, eventhough it was high time for me to move on to different things.
Is that such a bad thing? Many organisations would love to have such dedicated, committedemployees but is it possible that employees can become too engaged, sointerwoven into the organisation that they cannot separate themselves fromit? What do you think? Is this a feature of small companies only orsomething that many employees experience at some point in their career? I’d be very interested to hear your views.
About the author
Sheena began her career in Training & Development beforemoving to a generalist HR position in 1998. Since then she has heldsenior HR roles for several SMEs in a wide range of industries. A Fellow of theCIPD and Member of the US SHRM, she has a keen interest in EmployeeDevelopment, specifically in coaching and supporting managers to enable them toget the best from their people. She was appointed as Director of Peoplefor SPA Future Thinking in September 2011.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIngroup for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 15th September andwill be written by HR recruitment specialist EdScrivener.
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