Everyone who has been in a work environment can attest to the associated complexities, twists and then turns.
A perfect work scenario would be to have a job you love, cooperative colleagues, a super boss and perhaps a workplace culture that makes work seem like a beautiful adventure! The only thing is not every work has such a glamorous feel.
If you have a ‘typical’ work experience, it might be one like many employees in this clime are well familiar with. You get a job and at first you’re all pumped up with anticipation. Why not? You scaled all manner of hurdles before you eventually landed the job! You gallantly and successfully navigated all the dynamics of the recruitment process and the heart wrenching wait – for days for the offer call to come through. So you finally landed the job and you can’t wait to dive in, to show the stuff you’re made of. But a few months into the job and you’re already feeling ‘funny’. You sense that things are not going as you had anticipated. You come to terms with reality and you realize that you have been shortchanged. You figure the business was overrated; that the interviewers obviously over hyped the company. And so here you are wishing that somehow you had a sixth sense to have known all of these before you made the decision to leave your previous job. Reality is, at this point your ‘disconnectedness’ journey has just begun. You’re beginning to feel dis-engaged; even though you just barely started out on the job.
It is at this point you begin to contemplate walking away. You toil with the idea but you imagine it would be a deadly decision to make considering the difficult labor market. You had hoped that this new job would give you a break from the last where the boss held the reigns within the organization like a dictator.
But what does it mean for an employee to be ‘engaged?’ we obviously throw that term around a lot in HR/Management circles these days.
An engaged employee is proud of the organization he or she works for and will go above and beyond what is required of them in order to see their organization succeed. Does this look like you?
Employee Engagement measures two basic things: Affiliation – are employees connecting with the company, and Effort: are employees working harder than expected?
With this description in view, question is, in the Nigerian context, is it realistic to imagine that an employee will be fully engaged? Aside certain multinationals and selective private owned businesses, can a Nigerian business entity truly have engaged employees?
A lot of issues abound in the work place which has potential to leave anyone feeling overwhelmingly demotivated to the point that one’s best days of the week are only the two just before Monday.
Examples are rife. A mean supervisor or team lead who takes all the credit for work done, the unyielding colleague, the unstable decision maker not to talk of the saboteurs.
Imagine the wave of emotions which could be associated with scenarios like this; Feelings of anger, disgust, resentment, frustration, disappointment, complacency, bewilderment etc. In a situation where a quick change of job is not realistic and/or feasible, the sheer weight of these could feel too much to handle and the disappointment slowly hinders you from being your authentic self – the performer you’ve always known yourself to be.
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