Why Is Sincerity The Key to Employee Engagement?

Having experienced schemes in the past that felt insincere, I ask why sincerity in caring, coaching, contributing, and congratulating employees lead to better outcomes.   

Without sincerity employees won’t feel motivated, trusted, and appreciated. In essence, they will feel disengaged and disinterested. Training schemes, employee wellbeing and motivational schemes therefore have to come across as being genuinely interested in what makes an employee want to achieve and be part of a productive team.  

Sincerity is vital because engaged employees will achieve more for their employer and ultimately for themselves. They will be motivated to learn, to be loyal, and to continue to achieve more. Hona AI says, “By implementing these strategies, organisations can improve employee satisfaction, retention, and overall performance.”   

Sincerity Is Strength 

In his HR Daily Advisor article, ‘Sincerity Is Strength’ – published in 2010 - Dan Oswald, writes: “A person who is sincere easily develops trust with his co-workers because he is open and honest even in admitting weakness or vulnerability. In fact, in doing so, his credibility goes through the roof because we all know that no one has all the answers. And anyone pretending that he does loses that credibility because we know he isn’t sincere.” 

More recently, HR Grapevine asked in the headline of one of its articles: ‘Sincerity, vulnerability, joyfulness: What often overlooked traits are your manager development programs missing?’ It says competencies and traits such as vulnerability, joyfulness and sincerity are often missing in the definition of official managers.  

Authentic action 

It also cites Justin Schakelman, Vice President, Talent Development at Citadel Federal Credit Union who comments: “During times of change employees look to managers for honest, authentic action,” explains “Behaving this way, though, isn’t natural for all managers. And it’s nearly impossible to fake sincerity, so many managers simply avoid it.” 

The article goes on to suggest that sincere managers make brilliant managers. They are not pretending to be anything they are not. This permits them to approach employees without being company political, and without deference to the HR jargon that workers care very much less about – more so than they’d often like to admit. After all, biases and opinions can either help or hinder, or even complicate communications between organisations and their employees.  

Time to re-engage 

It seems that managers need to do more. The article points out that a Gallup survey finds that 90% of the UK workforce feel disengaged. Another by the research company says that managers directly account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. The Chartered Management Institute has also found that only 27% of employees consider their managers to be ‘highly effective.’  

So, does this mean that more training is required, and can sincerity be learned, or is that notion in itself insincere? Let us know your thoughts, and your strategies for ensuring that sincerity is a key part of building employee engagement in your organisation.  

Learn more with Engage Employee. This week includes some inspiring content about employee engagement from our recent Engage Employee Summit.  

Graham Jarvis, Editor