In the quest to build a great team, founders often get distracted by the superficial trappings of startup life. They fill the fridge with craft beer and buy ergonomic chairs, hoping this will make their team work harder. This approach confuses comfort with commitment.
Employee Engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs and committed to the organization. It is a measure of their emotional investment in the success of the company.
Engaged employees do not just show up to trade time for money. They show up to solve problems. They care about the quality of the product even when no one is watching. For a startup, this is not a luxury. It is a requirement for survival.
The Currency of Discretionary Effort
#The true output of engagement is something called discretionary effort. This is the difference between the minimum amount of work required to keep the job and the maximum amount of energy an employee can bring to the role.
In a large corporation, you can hide. You can do the bare minimum and still collect a paycheck. In a startup, there is nowhere to hide.
If your team is disengaged, they will do exactly what you tell them and nothing more. If they are engaged, they will identify bugs you missed. They will stay late to help a customer without being asked. They treat the company’s resources as if they were their own.
Engagement vs. Job Satisfaction
#It is critical for founders to understand that engagement is not the same as job satisfaction. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different states.
Job Satisfaction means the employee is happy and content. They like the pay. They like the hours. They like the free coffee. A satisfied employee is comfortable. Comfort is often the enemy of growth.
Employee Engagement means the employee is motivated. They might be stressed. They might be working long hours. They might even be frustrated by obstacles. But they are pushing forward because they believe in the mission.
You can have a satisfied employee who does very little work. You cannot have an engaged employee who is idle. Startups need engagement, not just satisfaction.
The Drivers of Commitment
#So how do you generate engagement? It does not come from higher salaries alone.
Research suggests that true engagement comes from three specific drivers:
- Autonomy: The freedom to decide how the work is done.
- Mastery: The feeling that they are getting better at their craft.
- Purpose: The belief that the work matters.
Founders often destroy engagement by micromanaging. When you dictate every step of the process, you remove autonomy. The employee stops being a problem solver and starts being a task robot. Robots are not engaged.
The Feedback Loop
#Engagement is not a static state. It fluctuates. To maintain it, you need a high velocity feedback loop.
This means you must constantly connect the individual’s work to the company’s outcome. An engineer needs to know that the code they wrote last week directly contributed to landing a major client. A support rep needs to know that their feedback led to a product improvement.
If employees feel like their output goes into a black hole, they will disengage. They need to see the scoreboard.