Work worth Doing

We spend a huge amount on employee engagement consultancy. Estimates vary, but it seems to be around £350 billion a year. I suspect most of it is wasted, providing at best temporary snapshots in time, and short term impact. I wonder what would happen if we paid as much attention to the nature of the work people do?

There is much academic and anecdotal research on the nature of the work people do from a standpoint of engagement and performance, but it often gets subordinated to efficiency. When it comes to priorities, for the vast majority of businesses, efficiency trumps engagement.

When we prioritise quantity (maximum output for minimum input in pursuit of bigger margins) we put process ahead of product. A Capitalist equivalent of the command economy whose logical conclusion is maximum use of algorithms wherever possible.

This model relies on buskers - temporary people who will do a good enough job for long enough to produce an economic result. It works for a while, but rarely underpins…