Hey, this is Chris with Hacking Your Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement, we're gonna go over number four in our five rules, the five new Rules for employee Engagement, based on this article from Forbes by Tracy Brower. Please go back and listen to the last three Thursdays if you haven't yet. On this episode, we're gonna be talking about the fourth rule for employee
engagement, which is just simply titled pizza. And when I was reading this article, I saw this, this rule, this new rule for employee engagement, and I immediately became a little triggered by it, you know, the
pizza. I mean, we've we've talked on the on the podcast many times about the ways that some leaders in some organizations try to, you know, get away with doing as little as possible from a leadership and an employee wellness standpoint, and you know, the not not treating employees like they should and then thinking that the way to solve all of those ills is with you know, a gift card or a Hawaiian shirt Friday or a pizza party. And
this is what I thought of when I saw this. But the article is a pretty good job of making sure that you, as a leader reading this, understand that this can't be a substitution for the things that people need, the other things that people need in order to feel engaged. It has to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. But cake tastes better with icing, and so having that there is a good thing as long as you know that it can't be the whole thing. It has to be
something that's additional. Yeah, I completely agree with that. Like, I think there's an element where you can do things to show appreciation for your team. You can do things that are sometimes either scheduled or surprising, Like I've done plenty of pot lugs. I've done plenty of you know, food calendars things like that, where people are aware of it, they're engaged in it,
they look forward to it, they can plan for it. And I think, again, like those are super cool things to do when people really
appreciate those things. But if that's all that I did, I was just always like, you know, there's a free pizza every second Friday, there's gonna be a pot like we're gonna do and that's all that we have, and not recognizing and not connecting with people and engaging with people, not even including them in the planning, Like instead of doing pizza, is there another food or you know, thing that we can do that would that would allow
us to feed our teams but also include them in the dialogue. Like those are the types of things that really create the environment creating engagement within a team. I think you know, you and I always laughed about like the whole Hawaiian shirt Friday, and it's just like now we're just now we just hate our jobs, but we wear a Hawaiian shirt on Friday. Now, you know, like nothing changes. But it's like this this silly idea of like
that's what gets people to be engaged. And I think that that's you know, this day and age, that that's not it. You know, that is not it. What was soever? I don't think it ever was it, to be honest with you, Like, I don't I don't ever think that. Yeah, it was like casual Fridays is not like this is what
makes our culture great. No, that's just one day a week that I don't have to like dress up in a suit and tie right right, It doesn't change anything at all in regards to like the work or the culture of the environment, and but but I think it does add a piece. I love what you said, like cake tastes better with the icing, right,
it does. So like it. These are things that people do enjoy and they do appreciate, but it's a small small portion of a much larger slice of what you should offer them when it comes to engagement, dialogue, connection,
empowerment in those types of situations. Right. And that's that's a perfect example because you know, you said, you know, it was never the thing, and I think that when it was appreciated more it was when people didn't feel as they had the same level of mobility in their jobs as they
do now. You know, nowadays people know they can just up and leave, you know, they can, they can walk out if they want to, and a lot of people do. But at the very least they can start searching in front of their job and they know that their resume is not going to be hurt by having you know, three jobs in a three year period on their resume. You know, twenty five or thirty years ago, that would have been that would have been really bad to have a resume showing
three jobs in three years. And so when you when you have a leader that provides pizza in lieu of all the things they should be doing. Then if you have employees who don't feel like they have anywhere to go anyway, they can't they can't leave, they have to stay where they are at their only option, then I guess the pizza can add an element of you know, some little bit of joy. But this is amongst a group of people
who are already actively disengaged. These are people who would rather be elsewhere already, and so you know, giving them the pizza is like, I guess that's something. It doesn't turn around engagement at all. It doesn't make them more engaged. It just you know, lets them save ten dollars on lunch that day. But that's the only time when it adds something positive is when the the the the environment as a whole is already so negative that there's really
nothing that's being done to change it. But they can't go anywhere anyway today. If you start trying to make it so that these these extras are a substitute for the true things that people really need in order to be engaged, your people just start leaving. And because organizations know that it's typically not something
you want to do in fact. In fact, I've been consulting with organizations for a while now, and there was an organization that I did some work for a few years back, and they were talking about trying to do something like this, like you know, pizza and other things to try to increase engagement. And because the because the environment was so bad at the time, one of the things I told them to do was not to do those things
at all. It's better to do nothing than to do these things, because all that does is call out the lack of those other things that are really needed. It reminds people of the things that are not there that really should be there. And I said that you spend spend six months or a year really focusing on the things that really need to happen first, and then then you can start you know, kind of kept peppering in the things like pizza
parties and Hawaiian shirt Fridays. But if you start with that, you're not going to get any goodwill from it. You're just going to get people being reminded of how poor the environment is. I want to talk a little bit about the things that people do in organizations where this has done well, But
first I want to get word from our sponsors. All right. In the places where I've seen this done well, the leaders they have a mix of things that they can do in order to make sure that, you know, have a pizza party or something like this is received in the right way. The first is to make sure that it is not in response to something. Hey, you did well on a project. Here's pizza. Hey we did really great last weekend on these this performance, these numbers, these metrics,
here's pizza. You'll always have people who will figure out or or or believe that what you did for them was not up to par for with what they did for you, what effort they put forward for you. If you make it in response to some thing, it needs to be a just because thing. Hey, I appreciate you. Here's what we're gonna do just because, not in response to something. But that also has to come with not surprising
them. There's a lot of people who if you're going to you know, bring donuts in the morning or pizza for lunch or something like that, that they will plan to not bring their own food because they know that you're going to bring it. And in organizations where people try to surprise the you know, employees by doing these things, you'll always end up with some people who grumble because they weren't told in advance and then they ended up you know,
bringing their own lunch or their own breakfast. And then lastly, you need to make sure that you are talking to your people about it in advance so
that you can take into account any particulars they might have. So if it's a you know, if you're going to do a pizza party and you tell people in advance that you're going to do it, so they don't bring their lunch that day, but every single thing is a meat lever's pizza, well you might have three people on the team that are vegetarians who then now they can't participate, And so you want to make sure that you incorporate an element
of inclusion and belonging into the process. You want to make sure that it's not a surprise, and you want to make sure that it's not in response to something specific. If you can do those things, then I think it's a great element to include in a broader employ engagement strategy that can actually raise
employ engagement. Yeah, and you know, I think for a long time and even to this day, you probably have leaders that may roll their eyes, like, what do you mean I can't just surprise my team with pizza or food? Oh, Like they gotta they have to know ahead of time,
or they're upset about that. Like there's there's the take on the world that can be kind of a negative or pessimistic take around, like you know, not understanding what real engagement looks like, Like you should be happy that I got this for you, you know, like I did this out of my goodwill, and you're not, you know, responding the way I want
you to. And I think what we've learned over time is that if you're going to create cultures and environments of belonging and being inclusive, a part of that, A big part of that is in the collaboration and dialogue that you have with your people and with your teams, and how you can just as easily say, hey, you know, I want to do something special for you all, you know, next Thursday, like you were saying, like we're gonna you know, I'm I'm gonna take care of lunch next Thursday.
So but I want to give you heads up. Normally I would I would you would love to have surprised you and showed up with a whole bunch of food. But I know that some of you may bring your own lunches, some of you may have been planning to be out of the office that day on something, some of you may have some dietary restrictions, And out of respect for all of those things, I want to let you know that I
do have something planned. So I would like to get your thoughts or your feedback or your information or whatever it might be, so that we can enjoy this lunch or this food or this pizza or whatever next Thursday. But it's but it is just because like, like just I just wanted to say thank
you and I appreciate you all. Like you can still do that, and it can still have that feeling and that meaningfulness and that element of something that that was not expected, but done in a way that brings people along, that allows them to be a part that respect the fact that they have things that are going on, that that they have their own routines, and so like again, it's just it's just a way in which we have to be
more conscious as leaders that that we do want to do these things. These things are appreciated, you know, in a high degree when they are layered on top of an already great cultured environment. And what I would believe is that if you have a great cultured environment, you're probably already doing those types of things. Like you're probably already head of the curve on this. You probably already know you know what the dietary restrictions you might have on the team
are. You know, you know, like you know their routines. But this is a good reminder of the importance of that when it is something like pizza or food or surprises when it comes to building culture and engagement with your teams, right, I think I think human beings have a natural tendency to want relationships to be reciprocal. You know, there's this this tendency to to lean into reciprocity. And so what that means is that you know, they
you want the relationship to have balance. If you feel like the other person is doing more for you, your natural inclination is going to be to give back. And and if you, as a leader are doing things in response to something, then you're not doing something in a way that will lead your people to feel like they need to do more. You're doing it in a way that leads your people to feel like you're trying to be reciprocal to something
they've already done. If you want to increase employee engagement and increase productivity, the things that you do for them need to not be in response to things they've already done, but rather just because because the employees who are who are generally good people and the ones who enjoy the job in general and who have a good relationship with you in general, those are the people who will take these things that you're doing for them and the response will be, Oh,
you know what, I need to maybe do a little bit more. You know, this is something my leader is doing for me. Maybe I'll try a little bit more today or this week. Because of that, you want to create the environment where they feel like they need to do more in order to make the relationship more reciprocal. Again, thank you all for joining us on this episode. Join us next week we will wrap up this article on the new rules for employ engagement. Have a great day.