Surfing the curves

We normally hear about product life cycle. We never hear about employee life cycle; even though both follow the exact same pattern.

In my previous post I proposed that what a company really needs is a talented outcome (not a person themselves) and this outcome comes, of course, with engagement. For that reason what we need to manage is engagement and how that engagement evolves (or not) over time.

We need to understand the in-built curves of employee engagement: normally when an employee joins a new company we can expect a high peak in raw enthusiasm. I call it the “erotic beginning”. The bad news is that, from that peak, we can only go down. Fortunately, it is with time and care that an employee reaches their engagement peak (perfectly embedded enthusiasm).

When I talk about engagement management I mean the way to keep this peak high, as well as re engage employees when a change arises. People are not afraid of change but are afraid of the potential loss involved in change. The sooner you detect this potential loss the better you will be able to support the employee to surf the change and keep their engagement curve alive.

In addition to engagement, maintaining and re-engaging people through changes (extending the life cycle of the employee), it also becomes critical to know when it’s the time to disengage people from the company. If you really love them, let them go.