The fifth dimension of management: make it personal.

• Author: Newens, Howard

The art of management is to get a group of people to work together toward achieving stated goals. Traditional managers discharge their responsibilities through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling or coordinating their employees. In recent decades, however, employee management philosophy and style have changed. According to this view, management is about supporting employees and helping them be fully productive members of the organization.

Owing in large part to advances in technology, present-day employees are more connected and informed than ever before, and traditional management techniques do not always work as well with today's workforce. Some employers have recognized this trend and have shifted the focus from shareholders to employees, based on the idea that happy and empowered employees beget happy customers (1) and improve the bottom line. These employers are paying more attention to the needs of their employees, especially that section of the workforce populated by Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers. (2) They are finding that these needs are significantly different from those of the baby-boomer workforce, and that modern workers disengage easily when their needs are not met.

The majority of employers, especially in the government sector, have not recognized the high cost of disengaged employees. Recent workforce surveys show that in North America, fewer than 1 in 3 employees (29 percent) are fully engaged, and 19 percent are actually disengaged. (3) Gallup has estimated that actively disengaged workers cost the American economy up to $350 billion per year. (4) To succeed, modern managers need to elevate employee engagement to a full-time managerial responsibility on par with planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Engaged employees are not just committed or passionate; they have a straight-line vision of their own futures, along with the missions and goals of their organizations. They want their organizations to succeed because they feel connected professionally, emotionally, and even spiritually to the organization's purpose. Managerial methods should create this alignment and connectivity, providing opportunities for participation, clear goals, personal accountability, and relevant feedback.

For example, in planning, employees will not have a sense of ownership in goals that were set by someone else. In organizing, responsibilities must be assigned to specific employees to avoid accountability gaps that...