In a recent client survey of the DOTS client community, I was intrigued by the response to the questions relating to the greatest challenges facing learning and development professionals. There were a few.  Employee engagement was high ranking in the survey responses across all industry sectors and sizes of organisations.

I am interested in learning more about this challenge.  There are a couple of questions in particular that I am going to add to my conversations with clients in the near future.  These are;

Is employee engagement an equal reciprocal relationship or is it weighted more to the employer or to the employee?  I am referring to responsibility and activity undertaken to improve engagement.  I know one colleague who is a HR consultant who would argue adamantly that the bulk of responsibility for employee engagement rests with the employee.   What is your opinion?

The second question I am asking is around different perceptions of employee engagement based on generational differences.   I do not buy into a lot of the stereotypes about generational differences although there are some that warrant attention.  I am interested in employee engagement as a derivative of leadership and how this may require different tactics for the different generations or age brackets within a diverse organisation.

As always, please let us know if you have some ideas and/or experiences you would like to share in these areas.