Shades Of Grey: An Exploratory Study Of Engagement In
November 2018Shades of Grey:An exploratory study ofengagement in work teamsDr Amy Armstrong, Sharon Olivier and Sam Wilkinson
AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank all of the teams who tookpart in this study. If you had not taken time out fromyour busy work schedules, this research would nothave been possible, so we are very grateful.We would also like to thank Mez Fokeer, GraceBrown and Siobhan Renshaw who worked with usduring the data collection phase. Additionally, wewould like to thank Cathy Brown, former ExecutiveDirector at Engage for Success for her guidanceand patience, and Andy Campbell, StrategyDirector at Oracle, for advice on many aspects ofthis project including the Diagnostic.This research project has taken a great deal oftime, so we are very grateful for all yourcontinued support!2
Table of contentsAcknowledgements .2Foreword .4Executive summary .5Introduction .6Engagement - a slippery concept .8What we did .9What we found .11Zone of Contentment .12Zone of Disengagement .14Zone of Pseudo-Engagement.15Zone of Engagement .16Implications .17Next Steps .18References .193
ForewordIt is now widely recognised that employee engagement is ‘a good thing’ and there is awealth of evidence that suggests a link between levels of employee engagement andbusiness performance. However, despite the general acceptance of this phenomenon,it does not appear to have translated into widespread improvements in organisationaloutcomes. National measures of performance and productivity remain stubbornly fat,which suggests that there may be issues concerning adoption or execution.One factor to consider is the signifcant change to the world of work, brought about bythe capabilities of new technology, such as the use of social media to promote a cultureof sharing, connectivity and immediate feedback; the rise of the ‘gig economy’ and morefexible working arrangements; increased team and project-based work supported bymethodologies such as ‘agile’ and ‘fast fail’ that promote rapid development cycles; andgreater transparency of information with a focus on the use of data and evidence-basedmanagement.These changes are challenging traditional models of leadership. Organisations arebecoming less hierarchical, more egalitarian and collaborative, with performance nowoften being measured at the team level rather than that of the individual. As a result, theskills and capabilities of the team leader are more important than ever. Leaders need todemonstrate new skills, behaviours and ways of working that refect the requirements ofthis new digital world.Oracle is delighted to support this research. We believe that it ofers a really valuablecontribution to the debate about how to improve team and organisational performanceas well as the working lives of employees.Andy CampbellHCM Strategy DirectorOracle4
Executive SummaryThis study examines engagement in work teams. In what we believe to be the largest UKstudy of barriers to team engagement to date, researchers from Ashridge Executive Educationat Hult International Business School on behalf of Engage for Success and supported byOracle worked with 195 participants from 28 teams across seven industry sectors. Whencomparing work teams, our fndings suggest that there are ‘shades of grey’ when it comes toteam engagement, opposed to teams simply being either engaged or disengaged. As a result,we have identifed four zones of team engagement:Zone of ContentmentWhere the work is seen as mundane, teams areinward-looking, perceiving themselves as victimsof a system that is defective in some way. Indisengaged teams there are ‘cliques’ and highlevels of mistrust between individuals. The teamleader does not empower or appreciate teammembers and is often see as having ‘favourites’or treating people unequally, which perpetuates anegative team climate.Zone of DisengagementWhere the work is seen as mundane, teams areinward-looking, seeing themselves as victimsof a system that is defective in some way, andwhere there are cliques and high levels of mistrustbetween individuals. In disengaged teams, theteam leader does not empower or appreciate teammembers and is often see as having ‘favourites’or treating people unequally, which perpetuates anegative team climate.Zone of Pseudo-EngagementWhere team members play the system to serve theirown needs, for example, by stretching workloadto fll time, or putting a positive spin on the team’sengagement, which does not refect reality. Teamleaders in pseudo-engaged teams are more interestedintegrating themselves to senior management thanbeing available for their team. In pseudo-engagedteams, people may be engaged individually, howeverthey pull in diferent directions and there is littleevidence of teamwork.Zone of EngagementWhere teams are proactive and solution-focused.In these teams, there is a positive atmosphere.Team members support each other personallyand professionally. They feel trusted, stretched,empowered and valued and are clear aboutwhere their team fts in relation to the biggerpicture. In engaged teams, members value diversity,see confict as inevitable and healthy, and usedisagreements as a source of creativity and insight.This research challenges traditional binary notions of engagement or disengagement and questions ifengagement surveys present the true story when it comes to team engagement. Our fndings show thatthe three most important factors regardless of which zone a team is located in are: ensuring people aregiven challenging and varied work; working with trusted colleagues; and having a team leader who istrusted and leads by example. Our fndings have been translated into a team diagnostic and our aim isto develop leadership programs to help managers to successfully lead teams to raise their collectiveengagement and team performance. This tool is freely available online.55
IntroductionThe weight of evidence connecting engagementto improved organisational outcomes is clear. Companieswith high levels of engagement experience 40% lower staffturnover than companies with low levels of engagement.Companies with top quartile engagement scores achieve12% higher customer advocacy and twice the annual netprofit than those in the bottom quartile (Rayton, Dodge& D’Analeze, 2012).Yet, for many organisations, high staffengagement remains out of reach.Employee engagement has been a focus of attentionwithin the HR community and among leaders forwell over a decade, and interest in the topic amongscholars and business professionals shows no signsof abating. IIn Google Scholar, the term ‘employeeengagement’ yields over 850,000 results andaccording to EBSCO, a leading online referencesystem, 480 academic articles have been writtenon the topic in the past three years alone, yet mostorganisations are still not engaging their people. InGallup’s (2013) state of the global workplace report,only 13% of people across 142 countries were foundto be engaged in their work and the UK has thehighest proportion of actively disengaged workersacross Western Europe. We know that activelydisengaged employees are potentially damaging toorganisations. These workers tend to have higherrates of absenteeism, monopolise managers’ timeand are vocal about their unhappiness, creating6a deleterious efect on those around them. If weare better able to understand why engagementlevels are so low, and uncover we might do toaddress poor engagement, we have the potential totransform UK productivity.This study, which was carried out by researchersfrom Ashridge Executive Education at HultInternational Business School in partnership withOracle and Engage for Success, sought to fnd outwhat gets in the way of engagement in work teamsand what might be done to address barriers toteam engagement. This research project focusedon engagement at the level of the team sincemost existing studies have taken place either atan individual level (i.e. examining an employee’srelationship to their work), or an organisation level(i.e. measuring the connection between individualengagement and organisational outcomes). To
date, few studies have explored engagement inteams (Bailey, Madden, Alfes & Fletcher, 2017) andthere is a shortage of studies that directly examinebarriers to engagement at team level. We knowthat engagement occurs at a team level (Salanova,Llorens, Cifre, Martinez & Schaufeli, 2003) and thesuperior performance experienced by engagedteams is related to higher levels or customer careand customer loyalty (Salanova, Agut & Peiro, 2005).Furthermore, in their 2018 Global Human CapitalTrends report, Deloitte cite team leadership andteam performance as one of the most importantissues for organisations to address: “managing theexternal environment’s macro trends efectivelydemands an unprecedented level of cross-functionalvision, connectivity and collaboration in which theorganisation’s top executives play together as a teamwhile also leading their own functional teams, all inharmony” (2018:4)Despite the time and resources invested and thehundreds of millions of pounds spent on leadershipand team development, there is little to show whenit comes to improving engagement levels (Morgan,2017). Team engagement, therefore, is a topic thatcannot be ignored.This report begins by defning the concept ofengagement. The report then outlines our approachto data analysis. We then present our key fndingsand close with some suggested steps to tacklebarriers to team engagement.7
Engagement – ASlippery ConceptThere are a plethora of defnitions and theories of engagement, yet there is still nouniversally accepted defnition of what it means. One of the reasons for this lack ofconsensus may be due to its conceptual overlap with other concepts such as jobsatisfaction and organisational commitment (Saks & Gruman 2014). We know thatengagement contains cognitive, afective and behavioural components, that is to say, itinvolves our attitudes and feelings towards our work and our behaviours at work. In thisstudy, our aim was not to add further confusion by attempting to unpack the concept.Instead, we defned engagement in outcome terms as:“an organisational climate where peoplechoose to give the very best of themselvesat work”(Armstrong, 2013:2).It is also important to distinguish between the concepts of satisfaction and engagement.Engagement is an active state that is related to productivity and innovation, whereemployees choose to ‘go the extra mile’. Because they want to, not because they areasked to. Satisfaction on the other hand can be seen as a passive state that is relatedto employee retention (Godding, 2017). Interestingly, of the teams in this study that wereselected by their organisations as being ‘highly engaged’, 14% were in fact ‘satisfed’, andnot engaged (see page 12 where we refer to this as the Zone of Contentment).When it comes to team engagement, we know that both the way we are managed and ourrelationships with our colleagues are important. In their review of over 200 engagementstudies, Bailey et al (2017) report that the extent to which we are supported, trusted andempowered by our manager; the support we receive from our colleagues; and how safewe feel to ‘be ourselves’ in our work teams are some of the strongest predictors of teamengagement.8
What We DidOver a period of two years, researchers from Ashridge Executive Education at Hult International BusinessSchool on behalf of Engage for Success and supported by Oracle led what we believe to be the largest studyinto barriers to engagement in teams by working with 195 participants from 28 teams across seven industrysectors. Organisations in the study spanned the public, private and not-for-proft sectors. Private sectorcompanies ranged from SMEs to UK-based multinationals within the transport, utilities, government, aviation,not-for-proft, chemicals and healthcare sectors. Consequently, we believe that the fndings may apply toteams working in multiple sectors across Europe and beyond.In each organisation, we compared up to four work teams; those that were perceived by their organisationto be highly engaged and those that were perceived to be disengaged. Teams were selected based on theirengagement scores (i.e. teams that had achieved high or low engagement scores for at least two years). Ifengagement metrics were unavailable, we asked organisations to choose teams based on the presence orabsence of the ‘four enablers’ (MacLeod & Clarke 2009). These being: ‘Strategic narrative’, (i.e. a clear organisational story that is understood by employees about where theorganisation has come from and where it is headed); ‘Engaging managers’ (i.e. managers who take the development of their people seriously, provide stretchwith support and give regular evidence-based feedback); ‘Organisational integrity’ (i.e. organisational values are refected in day-to-day behaviours) ‘Employee voice’ (i.e. employees are listened to and their ideas taken on board).To ensure we examined comparable teams, those selected were of a similar size, level and function. All of theteams in this study were ‘in-tact’ team members work together on a regular basis. By focusing on the dynamicswithin comparable teams in the same organisation before comparing teams across organisations, we tooksteps to control for external factors such as organisation size or industry sector.The research began in May 2016 with a pilot study among four teams in two organisations (these teams arenot included within the 28 teams in the main data set). Following the pilot stage, the research approach washoned. For example, we ensured that in the main study we compared teams of a similar size, function andlevel so as to aid comparability. We also included new interview questions in the main study to allow us tobetter compare engaged teams with teams who faced challenges when it comes to engagement.Data in the main study was collected via team meeting observations; face-to-face interviews with teamleaders; focus groups with teams and self-report questionnaires. In the interviews, team leaders were askedto talk about their role and style when it comes to setting a climate for engagement and to discuss currentengagement in their teams. In the focus groups, teams were asked to talk about their current levels ofengagement, and what prevents them being more engaged as a team.9
Teams were observed using a combination of the Johnson & Scholes (2008) cultural web and Laloux’s (2014)levels of consciousness, as frameworks to analyse team climate. Five aspects of team climate were studied: Routines e.g. ways of interacting as a barometer of the ‘emotional climate’ within the team. Stories e.g. stories of success or failure which serve to reinforce team identity. Power structures e.g. evidence of status or hierarchy within the team. Systems e.g. internal measures and reward systems to drive and reward performance. Symbols e.g. language used by the team which may reveal underlying assumptions.Despite its systemic approach, this study has several limitations. Firstly, teams were largely identifed viatheir employee engagement scores, however it became apparent that the engagement survey data wasnot an accurate refection of team engagement. For example, 14% of the teams that were selected by theirorganisations as being highly engaged were found to be either satisfed or contented. Approaches to datacollection in this study also had their limitations. In some focus groups, for example, team members werereticent to talk openly in front of their colleagues.To tackle this concern, we refned our approach in the main study by ofering teams the opportunity to speak tous on an individual basis. Given the scale of this study, data was collected by a total of six researchers. In orderto ensure consistency and support, two researchers worked together in each organisation. All six researchersfollowed the same research protocol and de-briefs were conducted following each stage of the feldwork.In the data analysis phase, all transcripts, as well as team observation notes, were shared across theresearch team.Thematic analysis was conducted individually then collectively by the research team. Numeration (i.e. thefrequency in which a theme appears across the interview transcripts) was the criterion that was used to pulltogether the fnal set of themes, since numeration is one way of indicating their relative importance (Smith,Flowers & Larkin, 2009). Consequently, the themes that are presented in the following section are presented inorder of prevalence.10
What we foundWhen we compared work teams across all organisations in this study, a more complex picture than teamsbeing simply engaged or disengaged was revealed. (To re-cap, our study defned engagement as a teamclimate in which people choose to give the best of themselves at work, Armstrong, 2013) Our fndings suggestthat there are ‘shades of grey’ when it comes to team engagement, which challenges traditional binary notionsof engagement or disengagement.Of the teams that were initially selected by their organisation as being highly engaged, 14% of them werefound to be merely satisfed or contented, and 29% of them were found to be pseudo-engaged. The idea ofpseudo-engagement emerged when studying teams who presented an illusion of engagement, that is to say,in the eyes of their organisation, and according to their engagement scores, they appear highly engaged.However, when studied in detail, a range of team dysfunctions (Lencioni, 2002) became apparent.In this study, four zones of team engagement emerged (see Figure 1). These zones are the Zone ofContentment, the Zone of Disengagement, the Zone of Engagement and the Zone of Pseudo-Engagement.Each zone is contingent on two overarching factors. The frst is the emotional atmosphere in the team andthe second is the behaviours exhibited by team members. In the zones of engagement model (below), teamclimate is characterised by levels of trust; psychological safety (i.e. the extent to which team members can‘be themselves’ without fear of judgement); support and care for one another. For example, a positive teamclimate (e.g. Zone of Contentment or Zone of Engagement) is characterised by informality; psychologicalsafety; fun; high levels of support and care for one another. In a negative team climate (e.g. Zone ofDisengagement or Zone of Pseudo-Engagement), the atmosphere is typically tense; there may be a fear ofconfict; hierarchy is visible, and t
Employee engagement has been a focus of attention . 2017). Team engagement, therefore, is a topic that . . It is also important to distinguish between the concepts of satisfaction and engagement. Engagement is an active state
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