Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about the following question and if the idea behind it is true or not:

“Why do we change when we cross the threshold of the office?”

In many organisations, people do change when they go to work – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

When people become ‘less’ of themselves at work, the fault can lie at the feet of the organisation, its other employees, culture, leadership and expectations.

Another area that we could question would be if the company is doing a good job of engaging its people or acting in a way that fits with their employees.

Employee engagement is a big topic and I’ve written a number of times in the past about it in different guises and how it can impact on productivity, profitability and customer experience. I believe that it plays a big part in this picture:

• Leadership: What’s engagement costing your business?
• Employee Engagement Isn’t Engaging
• Net Promoter Score: Would Your Employees Be Promoters of You?
• Measuring employee engagement – don’t overthink it
• I’m confused. Why do most CEOs not get employee engagement?
• Do leaders need to drink more to increase employee engagement?

However, stepping back a little, I started to think that maybe there is more to this. That there is a flip-side. Personal Engagement.

The age of benevolent companies and jobs for life are gone, competition is ever increasing, disruptive new technologies are entering the market every day and the security of jobs is diminishing fast (if not gone). Surely, we are entering an age where have a responsibility to ‘engage’ ourselves, to find a company that ‘fits’ with us, and that allows us to be more of ourselves not less. Is hiding at work still an option?

It seems to me that there’s two sides to every coin and I think we have start building teams and businesses that are full of people that are looking for engagement and are engaged not just ones that are waiting to be engaged or turned on.

That puts pressure on recruitment and leadership but don’t you think it’ll be worth it in the long run?

What do you think?

Thanks to massdistraction for the image.