How Employee Engagement is Like a Science Experiment

Disclaimer: I am NOT a scientifically-minded person. My husband and I play bar trivia every Monday night, and I audibly groan whenever they call out a science question. I haven’t taken a chemistry or biology class since high school, and I opted to take a class called “Flora of Indiana” in college to fulfill my science credit. We walked around collecting flowers and pressing them into a book. It was perfect.
But even though I can’t tell you what the solid form of carbon dioxide is, I understand that in most areas of business, you sometimes need to put your science hat on to set goals and solve problems. On 15Five’s Marketing team, we are constantly testing, iterating and drawing conclusions on new messaging or tactics to create better demand for our sales team. The thing is, while many departments within your business operate with this data-first mindset, your employee engagement decisions are often based on the opposite: feelings. Mushy, confusing feelings.
I recently read the book Trust Factor by Paul Zak, a neuroscientist who specializes in how our chemistry as humans affects what we want out of our jobs. Through his extensive scientific research, he has created a framework he appropriately calls OXYTOCIN (also named after the “love hormone”), with each letter symbolizing a key element of employee engagement that organizations need to create more emotionally-invested workers. Zak coupled baseline data about what humans crave at work with blood tests where he would gauge a worker’s oxytocin levels before and after participating in several engagement-boosting activities. He then drew conclusions about what employees need to be truly engaged at work.
Even if you’d rather press flowers than take a chemistry class, it’s important to apply a scientific mindset to your cultural engagement initiatives. Not only does this potentially validate your current efforts and ideas, but it helps you invest your time more wisely into initiatives that you know will actually work.
Take a page out of Zak’s book and start treating your employee engagement initiatives like science experiments. Not sure where to start? Here’s your 101 course:
After you’ve run your first cultural science experiment, as Paul Zak says in his book, “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” Looking for tools to get started? Through 15Five’s unique annual and quarterly employee engagement survey, we provide leaders with the validation and clarity they need to take action on their employee engagement hypotheses. And since we’re on a science roll, 15Five’s survey questions are based on neurological conditions and psychometrically-validated drivers that get at the heart of true employee engagement. Just start throwing those words into your conversations at work, and people will definitely think that you’re a bona fide data nerd.
And actually, the solid form of carbon dioxide is dry ice. Thanks, bar trivia.
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