Getting rid of the dead wood?

Here is a question from a reader of a recent "Engaging People" newsletter about the new self-driven employee engagement philosophy.

Question: Doesn't giving employees more control of their work, life and finances mean they get greater personal awareness and perhaps identify they should leave the organisation, therefore increasing turnover?

In some cases yes, and in most cases this is a good thing. Those that leave the organisation were those that were going to leave anyway. As such, this process can be likened to shaking the tree of its dead wood as, in most cases these people are the already disengaged "complacent cows" and "corporate cancer" that can be extremely unmotivating to the engaged "eager beavers".

One recent legal client we ran a program for was going to retrench 15% of their workforce. Two weeks after one of our face-to-face programs four people resigned. These four were all going to be retrenched anyway, thus saving the company over $200,000 in pay outs. The program however gave the leaving employees more autonomy in the decisions they were making. This also applied to the remaining employees, giving them more control over areas that they could take more responsibility in for improving their own work, life, finances and balance.

With the self-driven employee engagement approach and by using scalable systems and tools it can only create a sustainable win-win culture were everyone was a winner.