CHAPTER 4:

Stable and Critical Incident

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Stable

Overview

As the word stable indicates, when the employee reaches this step, he is convinced that the company is the right place for him to be at that time. This step is your opportunity to continue to promote, reinforce, and increase employee engagement. Therefore, your role as a manager acquires additional importance because you must strive to—at a minimum—maintain the current level of employee engagement.

Who is in the Stable step? List the names of those employees in Worksheet 4.1.

Worksheet 4.1 Employees in the Stable Step

STABLE	EMPLOYEE NAMES

Drivers

The overall atmosphere and environment in the workplace is very important at this step because the employee has made a decision to stay and this is where she will spend most of her time. Therefore, she must feel comfortable in the setting and with her team and management. Generally, employees prefer environments where they feel safe and secure. For many employees, total rewards available will figure prominently in this step because they represent solidness in the company; for them, any changes may be an indicator of impending unwelcome variations in the current situation, which could disturb the obtained level of stability. For others, potential career and promotion opportunities may be more meaningful as they envision a future in the company and try to define that future and picture what professional growth will look like.

Management and performance issues gain an additional and different significance in this step. Many employees have already formed a firm opinion of the company’s management and have set up expectations. Manager communication, particularly under any conditions of uncertainty, will continue to influence employee engagement either positively or negatively. Performance management issues are tied directly to management issues at this step because employees understand that management (you are part of it) ultimately decides the policy for them. Let’s see an example.

Management establishes goals and objectives and determines when to communicate them to employees. Management also sets up performance management systems and metrics under which the employee’s results and achievement will be appraised. Management makes decisions about resource availability and distribution to meet goals and objectives. In addition, management models expectations about work-life balance and stress management which, because of their long-term importance for the employee, will be critical in this step.

Employee Behaviors

These are some employee behaviors that you may observe during the Stable step of the Engagement “I” Path.

• Plays it “safe” because this is the place where she intends to stay.
• Looks for information about career opportunities inside the company and seeks answers to the question, “What kind of future will I have here?”
• Sees negative and positive experiences as opportunities to learn.
• Minimizes the impact of negative experiences. For example: “I take glitches as they come along, but shrug them off.”
• Speaks highly about the company in social media and elsewhere with conviction.
• Provides specific examples of brand alignment based on personal experience.
• Accepts the organization as it is, including its virtues and areas of opportunity.
• Models teamwork.
• Defends the company when she perceives it to be under a threat of any kind. For example: “I fully support this place regardless of what anyone says.”
• Goes out of his way to serve customers whether it is part of the job or not.

Select which behaviors from this list you have noticed among the employees who are in the Stable step in Worksheet 4.2.

Worksheet 4.2 Behaviors Observed From Employees in Stable Step

BEHAVIORS	Employee Names
Plays it “safe” because this is the place where she intends to stay.
Looks for information about career opportunities inside the company and seeks answers to the question, “What kind of future will I have here?”
Sees negative and positive experiences as opportunities to learn.
Minimizes the impact of negative experiences. For example: “I take glitches as they come along, but shrug them off.”
Speaks highly about the company in social media and elsewhere with conviction.
Provides specific examples of brand alignment based on personal experience.
Accepts the company as it is, including its virtues and areas of opportunity.
Models teamwork.
Defends the company when she perceives it to be under a threat of any kind. For example: “I fully support this place regardless of what anyone says.”
Goes out of his way to serve customers whether it is part of the job or not.

Manager Dos and Don’ts

In this section we present some examples of what you should and should not do when an employee is in the Stable step. We are not presenting them in any particular order of importance.

 

Dos

• Provide timely and useful positive and developmental feedback.
• Encourage questions and experimentation from the employee.
• Avoid miscommunication.
• Create a safe environment to stretch talents and make mistakes.
• Conduct reality checks for expectations about role, company, and career.
• Appreciate and value diversity in the team (age, gender, education, experience).
• Look for evidence of engagement or for risk of disengagement.
• Anticipate and remove barriers for employee’s success.
• Be consistent in your messages to the employee (for example, what is important and why).
• Handle performance issues fairly and equitably (workload, work-life balance, performance management).
• Focus your attention on the employee and reject interruptions during meetings with the employee.
• Solve and anticipate problems.

Don’ts

• Only point out mistakes and faults.
• Ignore positive or appropriate actions and behaviors.
• Delay positive and developmental feedback until performance reviews.
• Limit opportunities for employee development and growth.
• Assign lackluster projects.
• Be secretive about information that can be shared.
• Overlook initial signals and behaviors of employee disengagement and postpone addressing signals and behaviors of employee disengagement.
• Wait for the employee to make mistakes that could have been avoided and then reprimand him for those mistakes.
• Delay responding or returning calls to the employee.
• Delegate a role without delegating the authority.

Worksheet 4.3 presents a behavior self-assessment for you to identify those behaviors that you have displayed or that you display typically. Place a check mark on the right column to indicate if you display those behaviors, you do not display them, or you display them sometimes.

Worksheet 4.3 Manager Behavior Self-Assessment: Stable Step

BEHAVIOR	YES	NO	SOMETIMES
DOS:
Provide timely and useful positive and developmental feedback.
Encourage questions and experimentation from the employee.
Avoid miscommunication.
Create a safe environment to stretch talents and make mistakes.
Conduct reality checks for expectations about role, company, and career.
Appreciate and value diversity in the team (age, gender, experience).
Look for evidence of engagement or for risk of disengagement.
Anticipate and remove barriers for employee’s success.
Be consistent in your messages to the employee (for example, what is important and why).
Handle performance issues fairly and equitably (workload, work-life balance, performance management).
Focus your attention on the employee and reject interruptions during meetings with the employee.
Solve and anticipate problems.
DON’TS:
Only point out mistakes and faults.
Ignore positive or appropriate actions and behaviors.
Delay positive and developmental feedback until performance reviews.
Limit opportunities for employee development and growth.
Assign lackluster projects.
Be secretive about information that can be shared.
Overlook initial signals and behaviors of employee disengagement and postpone addressing signals and behaviors of employee disengagement.
Wait for the employee to make mistakes that could have been avoided and then reprimand him for those mistakes.
Delay responding or returning calls to the employee.
Delegate a role without delegating the authority.

1. How many are dos and how many are don’ts?

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2. Identify the three don’ts that you would like to turn into dos.

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3. Identify the behaviors that you do sometimes and explain why you do so.

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Critical Incidents

Overview

Critical Incidents represent the greatest risk for rapid disengagement or increase in engagement because they entail a shift in the employee’s relationship with the manager or company. A Critical Incident is a turning point that can determine the path that the employee will follow through the remaining steps of the Engagement “I” Path. Although the results of a Critical Incident will undoubtedly depend on how you (as a manager) and the company handle the incident, rest assured that other factors outside of your control, such as high-level decisions or past experiences, may affect those results. However, you can still influence those results regardless of your position and make a difference on how the employee reacts to the Critical Incident and the path that she follows afterward, either inside or outside of the organization.

Some possible Critical Incidents are: performance reviews, promotions and demotions, pay raises, incentive bonuses, interpersonal conflicts, development opportunities, role changes, priority changes, structure changes, work-life balance, resource availability, rewards distribution, policy changes, procedure changes, company mergers, company acquisitions, staff layoffs, business conditions, and business results. Elements external to the organization such as personal transitions, natural disasters, and economic conditions may serve to worsen or lessen the impact of Critical Incidents. Let’s see an example of Critical Incidents for three employees.

Sarah has been selected to lead a strategic project (a development opportunity) and is very excited about it. She counts on the support of her immediate family to share domestic responsibilities so that she can focus on the project as necessary, but they are not helping.

Michelle was informed that she will begin to report to a different manager with whom she does not have a positive relationship (structure changes).

Phillip just received his performance review and learned that his assessment and his peer’s assessment were very similar. Phillip is angry because he does not think that his peer’s work is as good as his.

After a Critical Incident, an employee’s engagement may go in one of three directions: stay the same, grow, or decline. We will discuss each one of these directions.

An employee’s level of engagement may increase and continue increasing over time depending on his interpretation of dimensions of the Critical Incident, such as its relative importance for him and how he perceives that he and others were treated during the incident. For example, the Critical Incident may be related to something that seems to be minimally important, such as reassignments of workspaces in an office. For an employee who has always worked in cubicles, being assigned to another cubicle may have relatively minor importance compared to being assigned to work in an office for the first time. The level of engagement of the employee who has a new cubicle assignment may not increase significantly, thus staying the same, unless he is allowed to choose the cubicle or is given some flexibility about how to decorate the space among other possibilities. In contrast, the levels of engagement of the employee will, very likely, increase significantly if he is assigned to work in an office for the first time because of the benefits typically associated with private workspaces such as privacy and status. Whether the office has windows or not may have an additional impact on that employee’s level of engagement.

Before we continue our discussion, we would like you to identify three employees in your team who have experienced Critical Incidents; your perceptions of their level of engagement before and after the incident; and whether their engagement stayed the same, increased, or decreased after the incident. We encourage you to consider any previous experiences of those employees that may have affected how they reacted to the Critical Incident.

1. Complete the following table in Worksheet 4.4 to put together the information about your employees and their Critical Incidents. Include your perceptions about whether their engagement stayed the same, increased, or decreased after the Critical Incident under the column labeled Comments, as well as any possible impact of previous experiences on the resulting level of engagement.

   Worksheet 4.4 Information About Employee Critical Incidents

   EMPLOYEE NAME	CRISTICAL INCIDENT	ENGAGEMENT BEFORE	ENGAGEMENT AFTER	COMMENTS

    

2. Describe a Critical Incident that you have experienced.

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3. What was your engagement before and after the Critical Incident?

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4. Did your engagement stay the same, increase, or decrease after the Critical Incident?

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5. Why do you think that your engagement stayed the same, increased, or decreased after the Critical Incident?

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Let’s continue with our discussion of the drivers of employee engagement to see which ones are particularly important at the occurrence of a Critical Incident.

Drivers

The key to employee engagement during a Critical Incident is to anticipate the questions that the employee will raise whether she communicates them or not. By anticipating the employee’s information needs, you as a manager will be ready to address any concerns that may have a pivotal role in the engagement path that the employee follows after the Critical Incident. Management is an important driver of employee engagement during a Critical Incident and its aftermath.

Organizational image and brand alignment are important for the employee because she may find a disconnect between them depending on how the incident is handled. Let us look at an example.

YouWillBeHereForever prides itself as being a company that cares about the future of its employees. One Monday morning, all employees were requested to attend an informational meeting where they learned about changes to the pension plan that affected the time when many long-term employees would be leaving the company as retirees. Specifically, the benefits of the pension plan would not be available for employees who joined the company after a certain date and they would be frozen as of a particular date for the remaining employees. Thus, those employees who still would receive pensions would not accumulate additional benefits even though they still had to continue working until their required retirement age.

To anticipate emotional reactions to this Critical Incident, the management explained the rationale for the change, provided additional information about what benefits would remain effective, and answered questions from the audience.

Let’s analyze what happened at this company:

• How do you think that the employees of YouWillBeHereForever would have reacted if, instead of being requested to attend a meeting where they could ask questions, they received a generic email informing them about the change?
• If the message was received via email, do you think they would have felt that YouWillBeHereForever really cared about them as employees?
• Do you think that their level of engagement would have increased, decreased, or remained stable after this Critical Incident if they had received the message via email?

In the example of the employees of YouWillBeHereForever, the engagement levels of those employees declined until they were able to “digest” the news. If you as a manager have to handle a situation such as the one at YouWillBeHereForever, you will need to work with each employee individually to help them to return to the Stable step because benefits are attached to the “I” (me).

Career opportunities and career potential are two areas that employees also pay attention to during a Critical Incident because they represent their future in a company. Let us look at an example.

A division of Indispensable, Inc. underwent its third management reorganization in three years as a result of turnover and shifts in customer preferences. In the last reorganization, Therese, a supervisor who was a direct report of the division’s manager, became an individual contributor reporting to a former peer supervisor; her former direct reports became her peers and she lost the level of access to upper management that she had enjoyed until this change. As a result of this demotion, Therese perceived that her career opportunities at Indispensable, Inc. would be limited in the future. Do you think that Therese’s level of engagement increased, decreased, or remained the same after this Critical Incident?

Performance management gains noteworthy significance because many Critical Incidents belong to this dimension of the workplace. Employees will be particularly sensitive to any perceptions of discrepancies in terms of how managers and other leaders handle its different components.

Topics related to total rewards, including base pay, incentive pay, and overall benefits will also be in the forefront of the employee’s analysis of the Critical Incident and its consequences. Let’s learn more about Therese’s experience to illustrate what we mean.

When Therese was notified of the change in structure that would require her to be an individual contributor reporting to a former peer supervisor, she was informed that her total rewards would not change. This information provided her with some stability as she internalized the impact and consequences of this Critical Incident.

We will continue to share with you some examples of behaviors that you may notice among your employees. We will now focus on employee behaviors during and after a Critical Incident as related to employee level of engagement.

Employee Behaviors

These are some employee behaviors that you may observe during and after a Critical Incident.

• Assesses impact on present and future job prospects and career opportunities.
• Seeks answers to questions such as: “Should I stay here?” “Will they keep me here?” “What can I do differently now and where can I do it?” “Is there something better for me elsewhere?”
• Quality and quantity of tasks completed increase, decrease, or stay the same.
• Questions motives of self and others involved in the incident especially if it is negative.
• Seeks support from internal and external networks based on results of assessment of their quantity and quality.
• Becomes reserved and withdrawn in interactions with others or overtly emotional depending on results of assessment of their quantity and quality.
• Nature and quality of interactions changes. May seek more or less contact, be more or less superficial in casual contact, communicate for instrumental instead of social purposes, react more or less defensively to feedback, and assume a more or less aggressive stance with team.
• If he perceives the Critical Incident as negative, may speak negatively, directly, or indirectly, about the company and the manager in social media.
• Limits involvement in activities that typically entail contact with other levels of management to a minimum, such as holiday parties, while deciding what to do in response to the Critical Incident.
• Reacts emotionally to Critical Incident either positively or negatively.
• Changes usual way to communicate relying more on written methods such as email to generate data and documentation about the incident.
• Talks a lot or not at all.
• Renegotiates the psychological contract.

Select which behaviors from this list you have noticed among the employees who have experienced a Critical Incident in Worksheet 4.5.

Worksheet 4.5 Behaviors Observed From Employees Experiencing a Critical Incident

BEHAVIORS	EMPLOYEE NAMES
Assesses impact on present and future job prospects and career opportunities.
Seeks answers to questions such as: “Should I stay here?” “Will they keep me here?” “What can I do differently now and where can I do it?” “Is there something better for me elsewhere?”
Quality and quantity of tasks completed increase, decrease, or stay the same.
Questions motives of self and others involved in the incident especially if it is negative.
Seeks support from internal and external networks based on results of assessment of their quantity and quality.
Becomes reserved and withdrawn in interactions with others or overtly emotional depending on results of assessment of their quantity and quality.
Nature and quality of interactions changes. May seek more or less contact, be more or less superficial in casual contact, communicate for instrumental instead of social purposes, react more or less defensively to feedback, and assume a more or less aggressive stance with team.
If he perceives the Critical Incident as negative, may speak negatively, directly or indirectly, about the company and the manager in social media and other outlets.
Limits involvement in activities that typically entail contact with other levels of management to a minimum, such as holiday parties, while deciding what to do in response to the Critical Incident.
Reacts emotionally to Critical Incident either positively or negatively.
Changes usual way to communicate relying more on written methods such as email to generate data and documentation about the incident.
Talks a lot or not at all.
Renegotiates the psychological contract.

Manager Dos and Don’ts

Here are some examples of what you should and should not do when an employee is experiencing a Critical Incident.

 

Dos

• Accept the incident and its outcomes or consequences.
• Reinforce positive behaviors and contributions, and correct what is inappropriate.
• Conduct reality checks for expectations about role, company, and career.
• Provide information to pertinent parties to minimize rumors and their impact.
• Anticipate and remove barriers for employee stability or for going back to the Stable step.
• Support questions from the employee.
• Be there.
• Handle performance issues such as workload, work-life balance, and performance management fairly and equitably.
• Provide dignified options to the employee.
• Offer available organizational resources to the employee.
• Accept vulnerability and deal with emotions.

Don’ts

• Promise what you cannot get or control.
• Point out only mistakes and faults.
• Create incorrect expectations about the employee’s future in the company such as a promotion or increased likelihood of staying in the company in a case of “progressive discipline or else.”
• Overlook signals and behaviors of employee disengagement.
• Be in an “emergency call mode” every day.
• Withhold information from the employee because she is not trustworthy.
• Show disrespect and disregard for the employee.
• Withhold organizational resources from the employee.
• Make unilateral decisions about the employee’s future in the company whenever possible.
• Make references to previous situations at all times.
• Make comparisons.

Worksheet 4.6 presents a behavior self-assessment for you to identify those behaviors that you have displayed or that you display typically when an employee is experiencing a Critical Incident. Place a check mark on the right column to indicate if you display those behaviors, you do not display them, or you display them sometimes.

Worksheet 4.6 Manager Behavior Self-Assessment: Critical Incident Turning Point

BEHAVIOR	YES	NO	SOMETIMES
DOS:
Accept the incident and its outcomes or consequences.
Reinforce positive behaviors and contributions, and correct what is inappropriate.
Conduct reality checks for expectations about role, company, and career.
Provide information to pertinent parties to minimize rumors and their impact.
Anticipate and remove barriers for employee stability or for going back to the Stable step.
Support questions from the employee.
Be there.
Handle performance issues, such as workload, work-life balance, and performance management fairly and equitably.
Provide dignified options to the employee.
Offer available organizational resources to the employee.
Accept vulnerability and deal with emotions.
DON’TS:
Promise what you cannot get or control.
Point out only mistakes and faults.
Create incorrect expectations about the employee’s future in the company such as a promotion or increased likelihood of staying in the company in a case of “progressive discipline or else.”
Overlook signals and behaviors of employee disengagement.
Be in an “emergency call mode” every day.
Withhold information from the employee because she is not trustworthy.
Show disrespect and disregard for the employee.
Withhold organizational resources from the employee.
Make unilateral decisions about the employee’s future in the company whenever possible.
Make references to previous situations at all times.
Make comparisons.

1. How many are dos and how many are don’ts?

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2. Identify the three don’ts that you would like to turn into dos.

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3. Identify the behaviors that you do sometimes and explain why you do so.

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In the next chapter, we will explore the next step in the Engagement “I” Path: Growth and Decline.