“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” (The Wizard of Oz, 1939)
I have an account with a bank here in Reno that is one of the largest banks in the country. I switched to them when I moved to Reno based on the recommendation of a friend that worked for them at the time (not any more), and because they have branches and ATMs all across town.
This bank has been doing an employee engagement program with one of the largest and best known consulting firms on engagement for many years. The bank prides itself in how engaged its employees are.
I’ve never hated a bank more in my life.
When I switched to this bank back in 2006, they screwed up every major transaction I asked them to handle – online banking, debit cards, credit card, accounts, deposits – I was amazed how poorly they handled so many things. In my opinion the problems were not so much a result of human error – they primarily resulted from faulty processes and poor policies.
So I made an appointment to talk to one of their upper level managers here in town. I met with her at the bank’s main branch here in town and detailed all the problems that I had encountered. She had done very little investigation of my complaints and she did not seem very engaged in our conversation.
I finally asked her directly “Is your bank too large to care about me?”
“Probably,” she replied. I knew then I was no longer in Kansas (North Dakota, actually).
The next week I opened new accounts at a local Reno bank and transferred almost all my funds to the new bank. I’m sure they don’t know it, but every year I get the opportunity to tell over a hundred students all the problems I had with my former bank and why I would never recommend them to anyone. I do this to demonstrate a number of management principles, including some of the problems I see with these very popular employee engagement programs.
For this very large bank, employee engagement is a charade.
The local branch managers and employees have learned how to play the game to make the engagement numbers look good and keep upper management off their backs. I don’t believe for a minute that those front-line employees are highly engaged. But I do think they know how to answer the yearly surveys to make it appear that they are. And even if they do have a degree of engagement, the bank’s systems often pit employees against their customers.
Don’t make your employees skip down the yellow-brick road in search of an Emerald City and a Wizard that can deliver elusive results. Partner with your employees to fix your crappy systems and help them see the bigger picture in the work that they do.
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Excellent post. I found it interesting in your previous post on engagement that only one of the criteria was customer facing and even then it had no perspective of the customer only how the organization perceived its service. How do you measure “engagement”? What are my incentives as an employee to be engaged? These questions would all be part of the “crappy system”. Sadly it appears the institution applied the same “crappy system” to its lending practices. Why do organizations make such great efforts to fool themselves into believing things are great?
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Bret, I started smiling midway through your post and now I’m laughing. I’ve experienced similar ludicrous situations, but they didn’t bring a smile to my face.
Isn’t this game just a circle of lies? Employees lie to their management so they will leave them alone. Consultants use the employees’ lies to prove they are delivering on their promises. Management lies to stakeholder and each other or, even worse, doesn’t know the state of their own business.
If that weren’t enough, you, a former customer, are telling large groups of people about your experience. If I were a manager at any level at that bank, that knowledge would have me crying.
The Employee Engagement Initiative at that bank was just a show, which should have been closed down. I’m sure it wasn’t the first show that should have been shut down.
The logical answer is the banks feedback system is broken. But sadly it’s the human system that is broken, which is much harder to fix.
But renewal is always possible. Eventually the bank will have a crisis that will cause the engagement of new leaders who can create a culture that focuses on delighting customers.
Thank you for making me laugh (and cry).
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Jim: The measurement of engagement is one of the big problems with it. The consulting organization I refer to in this post claims that their 12 questions will do it all. The problem is those 12 questions DO NOT measure engagement – they measure CAUSES of engagement and that is just not the same – sorry. And if you look at the questions they ask, they are management 101 -can’t believe firms pay big bucks for things that should be the basics of operations.
The large consulting firms are very persuasive. They approach firms armed with their internal data that “proves” how effective their programs are. And managing large firms is not an easy job, so when presented with what they are told is a simple formula for improvement, I’m sure it seems too good to be true.
The academic community is also not without blame. Engagement is a fantastic concept, but until the empirical proof is well established we need to remain conservative. Yet some very powerful gatekeepers in our field work closely with the large consulting firms – so $$$$. I think it is a big problem.
Thanks for the great comment, Jim!
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Steve: it is all very sad, isn’t it. My main concern is for employees, they deserve better, and are available to deliver better if management would “engage” them in different ways.
Your point about renewal is right on. The human system is indeed broken. Unless there is a radical change of mind, nothing new can happen. Don’t hold out hope for double loop learning at that bank.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Bret
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Ah, my friend we have all been there. I did love your take on the “engagement initiative,” though. Part of the problem is that “engagement” is one of today’s magic stones. Just rub that puppy hard and all problems will be solved. Joy and endless increasing profit will ensue. Yeah. Right.
You can imagine those bank execs saying, “OK, that takes care of engagement. What’s next?”
But engagement isn’t something you create, no matter what your engagement survey says. Engagement is an emergent property. It’s like the way you smile after eating a slice of great cake.
You don’t create it any more than you create that smile directly. You can take all the right ingredients and put them in a bowl and put the bowl in the oven, but you may not get a great cake. You can put them together in just the right way and still not get a great cake. You can get a great cake and have someone show up with the taste of vinegar in their mouth and not get the smile.
Enough ranting. Here’s a good bank story. When my wife and I got married, we had accounts at different banks. That seemed silly. We decided to move all our accounts to one bank.
One bank had better services, especially web services. The other had better people. We went with the people. In the end, it’s always about the people.
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Wally: what you have shared here adds real value, so I appreciate it very much. “Engagement is an emergent property” – brilliant. Spoken like a true systems thinker that I know you to be.
And concur with you – it is all about the people, but systems can help our folks. I had a bank once where the account numbers were so brief that I could actually remember mine. And what is even more impressive, my favorite tellers not only knew my name, I could swear they had my number memorized – they were that fast. The system facilitated our ability to have a personal relationship. Impressed my socks off.
Thanks once again for taking the time to share your thoughts, Wally! Bret
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