Early in my career I worked at a very large corporation where it felt like we spent a considerable amount of time listening to conference calls. This was a multinational organization where the conference calls would have hundreds of participants, often with several people from the same location on the call.

Sometimes the calls were informative and sometimes they were only platforms for someone to get exposure on their way up the corporate ladder.

The one thing all the calls had in common were buzz words.

It was almost guaranteed that each call would include a generous helping of the most popular buzz words and phrases of the day. Everyone knew buzz words were used as the popular corporate speak and were just catchy enough to make something old sound like a new discovery.

The use of buzz words was so common on these calls that my office mates and I started playing a game we called “buzz word bingo”. We would create bingo cards with each square containing a popular buzz word. With each uttered phase we would cross off a square until we had BINGO.

I imagine if I was back in that office today listening to one of those calls with a buzz word bingo card on my desk, the center square would contain the phrase “quiet quitting”. The phrase du jour has captured headlines. Even though the phrase is just the buzz word of the day being used to make employee disengagement sound like a new malice impacting our collective psychology, the issue has been affecting organizations since the industrial revolution.

There have been thousands of research papers written on the topic of engagement. Countless hours have been spent studying why we humans feel connected to our work, or don’t. Over the years employee engagement has been referred to as being “in the zone” or “flow” and now its opposite, disengagement, is called “quite quitting”.

All these phrases describe a mental state where a single contributor or team feels connected or disconnected with the work they are performing. Studies have shown that engagement produces efficiencies in worker output and increased worker satisfaction which leads to happier customers. The natural progression from happier customers is to more customers, and then ultimately, to more profit.

However, disengagement leads to opposite outcomes.

If engagement is the optimal state, is it possible to influence worker engagement? Yes, there are ingredients that have been identified as being key components necessary for creating an environment where engagement can thrive. It starts with hiring the right people. Researchers conclude that when the right people work in a trusting environment where the outcome of the work is connected to a higher purpose, an environment conducive for employee engagement can exist.

Even if you have created an environment where everyone trusts the leaders and they feel that they work they do is connected to a bigger purpose, having the wrong people on the team will erode all the positives.

While I am writing this there are an estimated 2 jobs for every job seeker and the shortage of workers is pressuring some companies to lower their standards in regards to who they hire. Business leaders are feeling pressure to hire so their teams won’t experience burn out.

Burn out leads to more workers leaving, making the problem worse. However, hiring the wrong person to support a team that is drowning is more like throwing them a cinder block than a life preserver. Plus, all those customers you were worried about loosing because you didn’t have enough people to meet their demands, they are now going to leave because they don’t like they way they are treated.

This downward death spiral can only be stopped by ignoring the pressure to hire anyone and focusing on hiring the right people. It will be painful in the short term but in the long run the organization will emerge stronger. Hiring is a challenge right now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future but hiring the wrong people will only make issues worse.

Even with all the right people on your team, if there is no culture of trust, engagement cannot exist. This culture of trust extends beyond the traditional leader/follower dynamic where the follower trusts that the leader has everyone’s best interest in mind and instead incorporates a trust dynamic that includes peer to peer trust. It is possible to have individuals engaged, but the overall team disengaged because the team does not trust each other.

Trust exists when there is consistency, communication, transparency, and accountability in the organization.

When the right people are on a trusting team and the organization has connected what the team does to an outcome that is bigger than the bottom line of the organization, then engagement has a healthy environment in which to grow. The work becomes the driver of productivity and an energy source pulsing through the organization.

In this case, the work feels more like a purpose than a paycheck.

The desire to produce outcomes becomes something that must be done in order to have a full life and not something that is done solely for a paycheck. Regardless of their ability to articulate it, most people want a life that matters; a life that has a positive impact on the world. The organizations that can align the outcomes from daily work with a purpose that extends beyond the bottom line are creating an environment of engagement.

Creating an environment in which engagement can exist is an investment of both time and money. Leaders need to see this as their main priority and something to be worked on every day. The work is hard, but the reward is great. However, once the culture is established the work to maintain that culture is never ending.

There will be times when it is easier to maintain and times when it is much more difficult. Our current market environment does not make it easy for an organization to create an engaging environment and leaders will need to double their efforts to achieve it because the downside risk of a disengaged team is just as large as the upside potential.

Leaders need to remind themselves that disengaged teams don’t change the world but an engaged team can put a man on the moon, create a product that changes the way we live and change lives through education, art, and science.