The Invisible Employee

Using Carrots to See the Hidden Potential in Everyone

Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780470560211
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470575734
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

There is a crisis in business today: the invisible employee. Feeling threatened, ignored, and unappreciated, invisible employees fight back the only way they know how—by staying hidden in the corporate shadows, doing just enough to get by, grumbling about this and that, and passing these techniques along to new workers. After all, why bother shining when no one notices your achievements? Why bother trying when you could be let go in the next batch of layoffs?

A business fable packed with hard-won wisdom, The Invisible Employee follows a group of people who live and work together on a mysterious island. In this second edition—updated with new case studies and current survey results—managers learn how to combat one of the most common negative attitudes in business: that smart employees keep their heads down and never do more than is asked.

Bestselling authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton show how effective leaders change this mind-set by engaging their people in their cause—setting clear goals, encouraging productive behavior, and celebrating every success along the way. The end result is an organization of productive employees who feel noticed, valued, and appreciated. In other words, they feel visible.

In today's competitive environment, all of us are looking for the next big product, the next big capability or solution. But great managers are finding that recognizing people leads to a more engaged workforce and a more successful business. The Invisible Employee shows you how to bring out the hidden potential in your team and your business.

Learn more about growing a Carrot Culture at carrots.com

CHAPTER ONE

Invisible People

Invisible People. That’s what the Highlanders of the Island called the mysterious beings who filled their vaults with treasures—but were rarely ever seen.

On special occasions, in candlelit halls, the elders sometimes gathered the Highlanders together. In low voices, they repeated the legend of how the Invisible People had once lived openly among them, but had slowly faded into the background until they were mere hints of the men and women they had once been.

“Yet, they live among us still ...” the storyteller would say, looking vaguely past the flickering lights. “They are a part of us. It is they who scale the mountains for the valuable jewels. It is they for whom we leave the Fruits of the Laborer.”

A thrill would run up the Highlanders’ backs. Many would glance nervously at the shadows of chairs and children and water jugs dancing around the edges of the room. But the Highlanders’ eyes, dimmed by generations of disuse, saw nothing more.

Always at this point, a child would innocently ask in a high voice, “Doesn’t anyone ever see them now?”

“Never.” The elder would say firmly. “It is the way.”

And around the room, all would breathe a collective sigh of relief. It was good to know that tomorrow things would go on as they always had on their island in the Medeokr Sea. Invisible hands would do the work. The Highlanders would go on seeing what they always saw, missing what they always missed. All would be in order. And that was enough for them . . .

And what of the Invisible People? At their own meeting, high in the mountain foothills, the Wurc-Ur tribe, as they called themselves, huddled together, the fire crackling and popping.

“You want to be safe,” an older tribeswoman said to the young. “You want to be comfortable. If you don’t want to experience failure and criticism and exhaustion, then you must perfect the art of silence. The art of invisibility.”

Another elder nodded and added, “It has become our only refuge.”

Young Star, a tall, graceful Wurc-Ur, could recite the next part by heart. Silently, her lips mouthed the story of the days when the Highlanders had earned their name by scaling the mountains themselves.

The gems were so plentiful then that the Highlanders had brought thousands of Wurc-Urs to the island to help harvest them. In time, the Wurc-Urs became so skilled that the Highlanders rarely ventured up the mountain themselves, preferring instead to remain at the base, where the water flowed cold and pure, and the trees grew tall and strong.

Still, they kept the name of Highlanders, as a denotation of their high status on the island—for they controlled the mountains with their riches and the lowland orchards with their jewel-toned fruit.

“We brought down many rubies—and even diamonds—in those days,” the elder of the Wurc- Urs would remember. “Before . . . before that terrible time.”

Yes. That terrible time, thought Star, when the Highlanders eliminated many hundreds of Wurc-Urs. The few remaining tribespeople worked harder and harder, but their efforts rarely met with approval. Finally, they retreated into the shadows of the mountains, their spirits beaten. Star had been a baby at the time. But her father had been there. He knew.

She vowed never to let the same thing happen again.

And so Star learned not to stand out. Not to display her strengths. Not to do more than was necessary. Like everyone else, she learned to blend in. It was an art. She and others learned it young and learned it well.

Or at least, most Wurc-Urs did. Once, just a few years before, an innovative and committed tribesman had traveled to the top of one of the mountains, where glittering diamonds littered the crevasses. Few Wurc-Urs had ever made it to that height. The journey was treacherous, tiring ... and lonely. But he had done it—and brought back a bag bulging with the rare glittering stones. The Highlanders had received them greedily. And for a brief time afterward, Wurc- Ur motivation to reach the summit was rekindled. But their extra efforts were greeted with silence from the Highlanders—as if diamonds of this quality were to be expected. And eventually the Wurc-Urs abandoned plans for new journeys to the top. Their quiet lives soon returned to normal. After all, why should they risk so much for so little?

I will never find a diamond. Or even an emerald, thought Star. It was more a statement of fact, or maybe even an oath, than an expression of regret, for she had never really wanted to climb to such heights. No one did.

And so, in this way, the dim-sighted Highlanders and the unremarkable Wurc-Urs managed to live side-by-side for generations on mountainous Kopani Island. Safe, but forever stagnant. No heroes. No villains. And they liked it that way.

Or so they thought. . . .

INVISIBLE EMPLOYEES

Why Employees Feel Invisible

It can happen to anyone . . . anytime . . . anywhere. You’re hunched over the speaker during a conference call, straining to hear, or picking up a fax, and wham! Suddenly, you’re invisible.

Like most people, Allison never saw it coming. Working in the public relations department of a prominent national bank, one of her assignments was to write the cost-of-living report for the corporate economist. It took a fair amount of time. She met with the economist a couple of times each month to prepare for the press conference and to review the report. Things were going well until one day . . .

“I was walking down the hall and overheard him [the economist] talking to my boss. He said, ‘Could you get this over to the girl who does the cost-of-living report?’ The girl? It was like someone had punched me in the stomach. We’d worked together for more than a year. I’d improved the quality of the report and the media reach. I’d spent hundreds of hours on his project, met with him at least twice a month. And he didn’t even remember my name.”

Wham! Inexplicably, unbelievably, Allison suddenly found herself invisible.

“He didn’t see me as a person. I was just a cog in the machinery. It was an eye-opening experience for me.”

Sadly, Allison isn’t the only one feeling invisible these days. Some 88 percent of employees surveyed say their biggest beef with their organization is “not enough acknowledgment of their work,” says Adele B. Lynn of Lynn Learning Labs. That’s not a few malcontents, but a remarkable 9 out of 10 workers who feel unappreciated.

Here’s another frightening stat: Time magazine reported that 80 percent of employees believe they get no respect at work. That kind of disrespect can break your heart, literally. Just listen to this: In a study of health care workers, employees working for a boss they disliked had higher blood pressure than those who liked their bosses, which, according to British scientist George Fieldman, could increase the risk of coronary heart disease by one-sixth and the risk of stroke by one-third.

We say in jest that a bad manager is “killing me.” In reality, they just may be.

Invisible Employees Do Unremarkable Work

In your employees’ perspective, managers and senior leaders hold all the power. Management decides when they come and go, what they work on, how much they get paid, what their dental plan looks like, when they take vacation, when they get yelled at, and when they are smiled upon. And, if the company does particularly well, it’s management that gets almost all the rewards.

Feeling overlooked, ignored, and unappreciated, invisible employees fight back the only way they know how . . . by staying hidden in the corporate shadows, doing just enough to get by, grumbling about this and that ... and passing these techniques along to new hires.

After all, they reason, why bother shining when no one notices your above-and-beyond achievements? Why bother trying when you could be in the next batch of layoffs?

David Sirota, coauthor of The Enthusiastic Employee , sees it all too often. “About 16 percent of the companies we deal with have a hostile workforce,” he says. “But the bulk of the problem is not hostility. It is that people have become indifferent. That is the silent killer.”

We quantified the problem in late 2008 when we commissioned a global professional services firm, Towers Perrin, to conduct a worldwide survey of the impact of recognition on employee engagement. We found that overall, 36 percent of the global workforce is disengaged. While that alone is frightening, it actually can be worse in some organizations. The Global Employee Commitment Study by Hewitt Associates found that as much as 54 percent of the workforce within lower-performing companies is made up of disengaged employees and people who place themselves or their careers over company needs. Backing that up is a survey of 5,000 households by The Conference Board, which found that two out of three workers do not feel motivated to drive their employer’s business goals.

In other words, it’s a thankless job . . . and employees are not about to do it. Or, at least, not very well.

An Engaging Solution

It’s not that way for everyone, however. Some leaders engage their people in their cause and find a way to bring out their best. How do they do it?

Not with more money, although for many, that’s their first resort. Hit employees with a quick shot to the pocketbook to keep them or make them happy. But although a paycheck (even a fat one) will get people to show up at work, it has never bought long-term commitment.

In their book, First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman state, “If you are paying 20 percent below the market average, then you may have difficulty attracting people. But bringing your pay and benefits package up to market levels, while a sensible first step, will not take you very far. These kinds of issues are like tickets to the ballpark—they can get you into the game, but they can’t help you win.”

No, the best managers move their teams and companies from ordinary to extraordinary by something as simple as:

• Setting a guiding vision

• Actively seeing employee achievements that move your organization toward its goals

• Celebrating those achievements

Great leaders, you see, lead people—not systems, processes, technology, strategy, or functions. Because, when it comes right down to it, all those things can be replicated—but your people can’t.

Ruben Roman is a young, brawny plant manager at the Comanche Plant of Xcel Energy in Colorado. He knows recognition isn’t the soft side of business. In fact, he knows the company’s recognition program, Xpress Ideas, which rewards employees for innovative ideas and solutions, generated more than $15 million in savings to the company in a single year.

In one case in Roman’s plant, a sealed air blower used to create a positive air system around the coal feeders went out in the middle of the night. The coal dust in the air created a dangerous environment for workers. Since there was no spare blower or redundant system, it looked as though they would have to take the unit offline until a replacement blower could be brought in two days later.

“But Xcel Energy employees, any time they hear a problem, are looking for a solution,” said Roman. “So they figured out a way to attach air hoses to pressurized air headers so we didn’t have to take the unit offline.”

Roman estimates the cost of losing power for those two days would have totaled about half a million dollars. And if his employees had been disengaged, that’s probably just what would have happened. Instead, the employees came up with a creative idea. And what did Roman do? The very next day he presented them with tangible recognition awards, costing a few hundred dollars, and the employees were thrilled with the public recognition of their accomplishment.

Over time, ideas like that add up.

“Recognition absolutely encourages ideas,” says Roman. “You see someone with an iPOD and they tell you it’s from recognition. Suddenly, everyone has a lot of ideas—about things people have been tolerating for years because that’s the way it’s always been.... It’s good for companies to have these programs because otherwise the ideas just stay out there in people’s heads.”

Of course, the impact of company strategy, products, and technology cannot be overlooked. But neither can a company live by a spreadsheet alone. Successful companies have to have that s...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Other Books by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE - Invisible People
• CHAPTER TWO - Blink Outs
• CHAPTER THREE - The See-er
• CHAPTER FOUR - Recognizing
• CHAPTER FIVE - Visible Results
• CHAPTER SIX - Blink Backs
• CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• The Invisible Employee Resources
• About the Authors
• Carrot Talk