Episode 01 · 6 July 2022 · 24:49
How Workplace Culture Can Accelerate Business Growth
How Workplace Culture Can Accelerate Business Growth
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What Oblong does
What employee engagement actually means
Engagement vs. satisfaction — the 'happy but lazy' trap
other#engagement-vs-satisfaction#happy-lazy-trap#employee-engagement
The cost of leaving disengagement unchecked
The performance indicators of an engaged workforce
other#performance-indicators#engaged-workforce#behavioral-science
The leaky bucket of talent
How to find out if your employees are engaged
other#measuring-engagement#employee-surveys#engagement-tools
Tools and resources for getting started
Show notes
Why Employee Engagement Is the Growth Engine You're Ignoring
Episode 1 — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Business Psychologist and co-founder of Oblong) kick off Truth, Lies & Work with a big claim: employee engagement isn't a soft HR nicety — it's fundamental to business growth.
In this debut episode, Leanne breaks down what engagement actually is (hint: it's not just survey scores), why disengaged teams quietly leak revenue, and how to spot the difference between a team that's "fine" and one that's genuinely firing on all cylinders. Plus, the boat analogy, the danger of asking for feedback you're not ready to act on, and the first steps to running a proper engagement audit.
The Big Idea: Engagement Is a Business Metric
Too many leaders treat employee engagement as a "nice to have" — something to measure once a year with a survey, then file away. Leanne's argument is simpler and more urgent: engagement is the mechanism by which positive attitudes, feelings, and thoughts become actual positive behaviours in the workplace.
And the research backs it up. High engagement is linked to:
- Reduced turnover
- Improved profitability
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Better innovation and creativity
- Greater individual wellbeing, performance, and purpose
In other words: engagement isn't a fluffy people thing. It's a growth thing.
Two Signs Your Team Is Disengaged (and One That's Sneakier)
The quiet resignation. People stop pushing back, stop suggesting, stop caring. They're still showing up — but they've checked out.
The vocal negativity. Change happens and the response is "here we go again." These are the people who'll tell you exactly what's wrong — but from the sidelines, not the solution.
The sneaky one: "happy but lazy." Some teams look content but aren't engaged. They're comfortable, but they're not stretching, not innovating, not bringing energy to the work. That's the trap.
The First Step: Run a Real Engagement Audit
If you're not sure how engaged your people are, the answer isn't a guess — it's an audit. A comprehensive employee engagement audit goes beyond "are you happy at work?" to understand the drivers of engagement specifically for your business.
But here's the warning from Leanne: if you have no intention of listening to your employees and using their feedback, don't ask. Asking and ignoring is worse than not asking at all.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Engagement is a business outcome, not a people nicety. It drives profitability, retention, customer satisfaction, and growth — treat it like the revenue lever it is.
- Don't ask for feedback you won't act on. Nothing disengages a team faster than being heard and then ignored.
- Look for the quiet signs. Disengagement isn't always loud. Sometimes it looks like a team that's comfortable, polite, and quietly coasting.
Resources Mentioned
- Oblong — the workplace culture consultancy co-founded by Al and Leanne: oblonghq.com
- Employee engagement audit — Leanne recommends starting with a comprehensive audit to understand engagement drivers in your business
- Email the show: podcast@oblonghq.com
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottI can't stress enough that if you have no intention of listening to your employees and using their feedback, applying their feedback, you are better doing nothing at all.
Al ElliottHello and welcome to episode 1 of Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture. Now, this is a podcast for business owners who want to build high-performing teams that genuinely care about the business that you've built. So if that's your bag, then you're in the right place. So let's do some introductions. I'm Al.
Leanne ElliottI'm Leanne.
Al ElliottAnd we co-founded a consultancy called Oblong. Which is, well, what does Oblong do, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottWell, Oblong is really founded on exactly what you, you mentioned at the beginning there about what this podcast is about. It's, it's built on a belief that the crucial route to business growth and success is to create teams that care as much about the business as you do. Um, so we've created a culture roadmap to help owner-led businesses achieve just that. It's, it's fairly simple. People think this thing, these things are rocket science, and it's not really, but don't tell them because I wouldn't have a job. But really, it comes down to great recruitment, finding the right people, great engagement, keeping the right people, and great management, empowering the right people.
Al ElliottSimple enough. Now, you'll probably notice, we're gonna give you a little bit of format of this podcast, that Leanne is definitely the expert. She's got 14 years in the field. She's got a master's, she's got, she's got letters after her name that I don't even know what they mean, but they just make her sound very, very fancy. So The format of this podcast is going to be that I will be asking her questions, and she'll be basically giving really good replies. But also, I'm making sure, coming from a background of sales and marketing, and managing and owning a few businesses myself, I'm going to be pushing her to translate that into actual actionable items and things that the rest of us who haven't spent 20 years in the field can understand. Does that sound fair?
Leanne ElliottYes, it does. As a business psychologist, I'm sure any, any technical person out there that has a real passion can, can fall down a rabbit hole of explaining things that really don't matter. It's the nuts and bolts. It's the behind-the-scenes things you don't need to know. It's like when Al starts going on about coding and all other stuff. I'm like, sure, but does it look pretty? So yes, I'm here to give you the science and Al's here to keep me on track in translating that to things that are commercially relevant for your business.
Al ElliottCool. Okay, so there's lots more things I'd like to say, but we might leave those to the end because I think the most important thing we need to do is address the question that we've got in the title, which is, what is employee engagement. So, Leanne, can you give us an idea of what employee engagement is?
Leanne ElliottI can. So employee engagement, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure, maybe you can help with this, how kind of well-known a term it is in the general business world. In my world, it's, it's a thing, it's a big thing. Um, so in the business world, I don't know, but the, the The basic principle is that employee engagement, or to be an employee who is engaged, means that you have positive attitudes, thoughts, and feelings about both your work and the organisation in which you do it. Now, the key is that it's not just about employee satisfaction. The key to employee engagement is that these positive attitudes, feelings, thoughts translate to actual positive behaviours within the workplace. And it's these positive behaviours that have a direct impact on business performance. There is so much research out there, and I think one of the things that really bug me, and I'll be honest, if you ever say this to me, you'll see my face change, is when people say these types of things are fluffy or nice to have. And being honest, that's just ignorant because there is so much research out there that shows that high employee engagement is not only linked to greater individual outcomes such as wellbeing, individual performance, satisfaction, um, Yeah. purpose, meaning, um, but also business outcomes— reduced turnover, improved profitability, increased customer satisfaction, improved innovation, creativity, and growth. It is something that is fundamental in growing your business.
Al ElliottSo I think from what I'm understanding from what you're saying there, and of course this, this is a little bit contrived in that I do understand it, but for the listener's point of view, then what we're saying is it's not just, as you're saying, nice to have, or I dare use the F word, That makes you angry. That's fluffy, by the way, not the other F-word. Um, but what we're saying is that a disengaged employee is A, more likely to leave, B, more likely to do bad work, and C, potentially corrupt the other part of people in the workforce or the team with their bad light. You— I'm sure we've all had it, an employee who comes in late and doesn't really care and, um, and just, you know, sits and reads magazines or, or goes on Facebook when they don't think anyone's looking. That's what you would say would be disengaged?
Leanne ElliottYes, I think somebody who is— and I think that's an interesting thing you brought up as well, is that we have engaged employees, we have disengaged employees, and then we have actively disengaged employees. So those disengaged employees might be the people that, you know, spend a bit more time on Amazon or ASOS during the extra 10 minutes after their lunch break, or, you know, spend a bit too much time making some coffee, or just do the bare minimum of their job to get by, which is, which is fine, you know, they're just doing the bare minimum. But the difficulty is those people are going to feel frustrated, disillusioned, bored, um, you know, they're, they're languishing, they're not, they're not happy and they're not fulfilled. So the dangers of those people are going to become actively disengaged. Those people who are actively disengaged are disruptive forces. So when I guess I hear business leaders talk a bit more about top being having a toxic culture. And really, that's a result of employees being disengaged because they are proactively working to hinder the progress and outcomes of the business. The interesting thing about employee engagement as well is that the statistics are quite shocking. So, it's estimated that the vast majority of employees are either disengaged or proactively or actively disengaged. Talking kind of only about 20 to 30% at best of an organisation is engaged. One of the analogies that we like to use a lot at Oblong HQ to explain the real danger of not just the people who are actively disengaged, but those people who are in the middle, is imagine a rowing boat with 10 rowers in it. You've got 2 people that are really engaged and they're pulling as hard as they can to push that boat forward. Then you've got 2 2 rowers on the other side of the boat who are actively disengaged, and they're rowing as hard as they can in the other direction just to, just to make sure the business or the boat doesn't go forward. So that's 4 people rowing in opposite directions, but then you've still got the 6 people in the middle. They're not rowing at all. They're making zero effort to hinder the progress of the boat, but they're also making no effort to push it forward. Those are the people that are disengaged, and those are the people that if you can reach as a business leader and create the environment that's needed to engage them, that's what's going to propel your business forward.
Al ElliottOkay. Well, I do really like that analogy, and I know we used it in other stuff, that analogy of the boat. We've even got an image somewhere, I think, which we might try and pop up in the show notes. But so let's just take an example. Let's go proper concrete examples. So, um, I am a— let's pretend I own a, um, a design agency and I've got 25 employees. Um, and then there's me and maybe 2 or 3 others who are management leaders, etc., etc., which is probably, probably similar to most of the people who are listening to this right now. You're not— we're not necessarily talking to people, you know, the IBMs who've got 250,000 people across the world. We're talking to you, the person who owns a business. So I own a business, I've got 25 employees. Um, what you're saying there— in fact, let's do it 30 because then the maths works out. So what you're saying there is that at any point in time, let's say 4 or 5 are massively engaged and are pulling the business forward. So they might be doing like going the extra mile for client work. They might be thinking about stuff at home in their own time because they're happy to do so. They might be creating new, new processes or improving existing processes. Then what you're saying is the 4 or 5 people who are actively disengaged And they're going to be— well, what are they doing?
Leanne ElliottSo they're not going to follow the new processes. They're going to be very vocal negatively when things change. They might be taking an approach with clients that is destructive and detrimental. Um, it's likely that— and you know, these are things that are intentional— it's likely as well that they're, you know, that because they are disengaged, they're not They don't care. They've, they've, they just have lost all, all care. So their attention to detail is going to be reduced. Um, and I think as well, they— the, the danger there is you've got people who are working really hard and really engaged and believe in what the business is trying to do. You've got people who are just completely disillusioned and causing— they're the people that cause the fires. You know, you know those times where you wake up and you, you see that notification on your phone from that person, you're like, oh.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottGod, here we go again. Because they're, you know, that they're— yes, they're unsatisfied, they're disengaged. Um, and I guess the danger is that you've got these people that are working, giving that, you know, going the extra mile, uh, working really hard. But the, the risk as a business owner is that you over-rely on those people because they're the people that make your life easier, but they're the people you're going to give more to and more responsibility and ask more of, and they're the people that burn out.
Al ElliottSo I'm going to ask you in a second about what are the main signs that you've got people who are engaged or disengaged in your, in your business. But what's the advantage of going after those people in the middle of the boat? So we've talked about them actively disengaged, we talked about the actively engaged. What's the advantage of going for them? I mean, why not just leave it as it is?
Leanne ElliottThe danger of leaving it as it is, is like any business problem. If you've got revenue leakage and you're not sure where it's going, if you leave it as it is, that revenue is going to continue to decline. You can't afford to leave it as it is. You have to do something about it. So, there's a few different ways. It's like if you're looking at saving money within your business, there's a few different ways that you can look at it, but it's going for the people or the areas of least resistance. Getting those quick wins and that boost is really going to have an impact on the morale, the culture within your organisation, but also on your capacity and your influence as a leader. Yes, it's brilliant to try and go after those people that are actively disengaged and try and bring them around, but the fact is you've got the majority majority of people sat there who, who aren't, aren't actively disengaged yet. They're not actively working against you or the business. So, you know, target those people first, um, and hopefully start to see some of those improvements come through. And that in turn might start to, you know, change the, the thoughts and attitudes of people who are actively disengaged. Did you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— yeah, yeah, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business Professional.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back. I'll cut that out.
Al ElliottKeep that in. Cool. Okay, so can— if, if I was to ask you, um, from all your experience of doing all this, what do you think— if— what are the signs of this, of disengagement? Um, so I mean, I'm sure you've seen hundreds of businesses and you can go in there, and from me as this fictional business agency owner, then what am I looking out for that might tell me that I've got a disengaged workforce?
Leanne ElliottI mean, I think there's a number of very clear performance indicators, first of all, from a business perspective. The first and most obvious one perhaps is going to be a high turnover rate. If you've got lots of people leaving your business, then that is a sign that there is an issue with engagement. I think that's what's interesting about the whole media hype about the Great Resignation following the pandemic and how it's completely fundamentally changed how people think about work. It's not fun. People have thought that way about work for a long time. It's just now a case that they've been given an alternative reality, so they're going to the organisations that can provide them with that on a longer-term basis. If you have a high turnover rate, that's a clear sign. Other clear signs are going to be high absenteeism, although that's probably more closely related to burnout or stress, so people who are ill from work for long periods of time. It can be more indicative of stress. But as I mentioned before, if we're putting extra responsibilities and workload and expectations on those few people that are engaged, that leads to burnout. So, the issue is the same. There's an issue with engagement. Other things could be stagnant growth. As I mentioned, employee engagement is predictive of organisational growth. It's also predictive of creativity and innovation. So, if you're struggling to get any kind of real accountability and ideas and, you know, kind of bold ideas that are going to push the business forward, that could be a sign that, um, there is an issue with employee engagement. Um, and I think as well, if you have— if you struggle with your management team, if you're a senior leader or a business owner and you don't feel you have the managers around you to kind of prevent problems, spot risks, basically be that, that buffer for you, but, you know, then, then I think that could be a sign of of potential engagement issues as well.
Al ElliottSo using the analogy in my world of sales and marketing, then we often talk about this leaky bucket where if you're going out there and advertising and getting new clients in, but you can't, you can't convert them, or it's not quite— you've not got the processes or even the staff aren't converting the employees, the salespeople aren't converting these people properly. You've got this leaky bucket. So it doesn't matter how much you fill it up, it's always going to flow out. Now, what it sounds like is that what you're saying there is with With your teams and employees, unless you've got everyone or as many people as possible engaged, people aren't planning on leaving, then just by adding more people to the team, you're going to sort of maybe add more petrol to the fire or gasoline if you're from the, from the US, you're adding more fuel to the fire, which is going to mean that people are going to leave quicker. I mean, is that, what do you think about that? Is that, is that really—
Leanne ElliottYeah, absolutely. Because I think the, the interesting thing about particularly smaller businesses is that even just a, you know, 2 or 3 new hires, It can fundamentally change the dynamic of the business. If you've only got 20 people in your organisation, you're adding another 10% to your team. That's significant. If you compare that to someone like Facebook, that's like adding 80,000 people to the organisation. It's a lot. That change and disruption in itself can threaten employee engagement. If people aren't engaged, it's not going to help. The issue you have as well with adding to that leaky bucket, as you say, is if If you don't have your, for a better way of saying it, shit together when it comes to people and culture, what you're telling your candidates that are coming in, the great talent you want to bring into your organisation, about what your organisation looks like and how it's like to work there, and they come in and are completely disillusioned because what they see isn't what you've described, then they're disengaged before they've even finished their onboarding. process. Um, so yeah, if you don't get these things right, or at least start to implement things that will, um, you're wasting money in terms of, well, everything— recruitment, training. Yeah, it's just, it's just not sustainable and it's not scalable.
Al ElliottSo the target listener is someone who's got a service business which is reliant on, um, on employee and employee output. So if we think about that and you, let's say that someone's got 30, 40 employees at this point in time, they recognize some of the things you've been talking about there. What tools can they use to measure the employee engagement?
Leanne ElliottSo I think the interesting thing about employee engagement, well, I think it's interesting. The interesting thing about employee engagement is that it provides us with a predictable model of employee behaviour. So, by that, what I mean is that the most influential employee engagement models out there from a psychology perspective are engagement models that what you put in as a business owner, what you can have direct influence over, is going to impact employee attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and then in turn, it's going to impact on employee behaviours and then in turn, organisational performance.
Al ElliottWhat do you recommend someone says, shit, I need to know how engaged my employees are. What do they do? What tools do they use to find that out?
Leanne ElliottSo the best, the best way of finding that out is to run a really comprehensive employee engagement audit. And that will include looking at the current structures, policies within your organisation, then actually running a survey that's going to measure not only how the drivers engage within the organisation, but how that's currently impacting on employees' attitudes and behaviours. And then we can also connect that performance as well, and then developing some kind of action plan or roadmap that you're going to commit to to make things better. I can't stress enough that if you have no intention of listening to your employees and using their feedback, applying their feedback, you are better doing nothing at all because you're just going to make the disengagement worse if you do that. In terms of tools out there, as you say, we offer a tool like that. There's lots of consultancies out there that will as well— Real World Group, Robinson Cooper, to name a couple. But there are also some really great free tools out there if you just want to do a quick health check. The one that I think is empirically the most sound and is free is the HSE Management Standards Survey, which is free, available on their website. It's about 30 questions. It comes with an analysis tool as well, so you can be able to kind of see the, the areas there. I think it, it's just important, as I said, to make sure that having the data is great, but it's also making sure that you have the expertise either within your organization or external to it that's going to help you translate that into, into actions and plans that can have an impact.
Al ElliottYeah. And, and I think that it's, again, as a sales, as a sales and marketing guy for, for Oblong, I think it's really important that, that we stress that, that it's That, yes, we have our own survey, but it's not about the survey, it's about the results. You can do this on Google Forms, you can do this on SurveyMonkey or something if you really want to, um, even though they probably shouldn't.
Leanne ElliottYeah, yeah, I, I'm uncomfortable suggesting that simply because it's the reason that business psychology, occupational psychology exists as a profession, is that so much work is done into making sure we're measuring what we're actually going out to measure. And a lot of the engagement surveys out there, or we'll themselves engagement surveys. I'm going to name this more because it's— I've come across it, clients using it more. Something like OfficeVibe is— the OfficeVibe is actually more measuring employee satisfaction, and that is an attitude of employee engagement. That's an outcome. So it's making sure you're measuring exactly what you want to measure. So I would— if you're not in a position to hire a consultant, I would look at something like the HSE Or even the Gallup 12, that's fairly cost-effective. I think it's about £20 per person. And empirically, scientifically, it's going to give you reliable data that you can apply within your business.
Al ElliottOkay. So, I think hopefully by now that not only do you have an idea of what employee engagement is, but you'll have an idea of A, why you should care, B, what examples or what the real life looks like when someone is engaged or disengaged. Remember that boat where you've got 4 at the front rowing, rowing their, their little backsides off, 4 at the back rowing the opposite direction, and the rest of them in the middle just bimbling around, sharpness.
Leanne ElliottReading a book, watching the flowers grow.
Al ElliottSo, um, we know that. And also, Leanne's given us a couple of really good tools that you can use. Um, there, obviously we have our own, which is a bit more in-depth. And I think the, the difference is that it's— you can use one of those tools, but unless you really know what you're looking that, then you can actually potentially do more harm than good. I think that that probably sums it up. Is there anything else you want to add to the end of this?
Leanne ElliottThe only thing that I would add is information is always power, and that's a great thing about having insights about your business. Uh, you know, you wouldn't create a finance strategy without checking your bank account, consulting your finance manager, so why create a people and culture strategy without gathering some data and checking with a professional? In terms of resources, as I said, there's some great, great free ones out there, and I'm sure we'll link them in the description. But if you are just generally interested in engagement, what it all means, then I couldn't recommend Engage for Success more highly. This is based on the McLloyd Report from 2009. So yeah, check it out.
Al ElliottIs that a book or is that a tool?
Leanne ElliottIt's a website, and it's a really great website. It's got a blog. You can also download the full 200-odd page report should you wish. Um, it also has, um, lots of different resources on there as well, some surveys that you can use, some tips for management, um, loads of things on there. So yeah, practical tools and also just some really good information. Cool.
Al ElliottOkay, so if you're listening to this and you fancy 25 minutes chatting to a business psychologist, then drop us an email. Email podcast@oblong And we'll pick someone out of the bag and give them 25 minutes free. Leanne's looking at me because she didn't know I was going to do this.
Leanne ElliottI have not been consulted on this, but yes, no, of course, I would love to.
Al ElliottThat sounds great. And if you have any comments or thoughts, just email podcast@oblonghq.com. If you're interested in employee engagement and in resilience, in building great teams, in anything we've talked about here, it's all covered at oblonghq.com, which is our website, and there's a contact form there, you can get in touch with us. Is there anything else to cover? Have we covered it? Have we done it?
Leanne ElliottI think we've done it. Episode 1 of podcast.
Al ElliottCool. Right. We'll see you next time then.
Leanne ElliottBye.
Al ElliottBye-bye.