Why employees disengage at work and how leaders build trust, communication, and stronger team performance.

Employee Engagement and Workplace Communication

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Self-Reliant Team Podcast. My name's Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today.

Understanding Employee Engagement and Disengagement

Talking about employee engagement today and it engagement, employee engagement, it's a big, it's a big subject, and it means because it means a lot of different things. Like you can say it and people can take there's a lot of meanings to it. There's not one specific thing that it specifically means. There's it's broad. Means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. People define it different ways, really.

When it comes down to it though, rather than talking about all the things that engagement can mean, what we really care about as leaders and owners of companies is disengagement. So I want to talk about disengagement because that's the problem that we're actually dealing with.

So what that looks like is what we see in the workplace is we actually see people like it looks like people don't care. Like they just don't care, okay? Like, you know, they they're not taking ownership, they're not taking responsibility, they're just not communicating. They're not they're not speaking up, they're not, they're not saying anything. And we're just sitting there thinking, what the hell is the matter with you? Why aren't you participating in this job that I'm paying you to do? Or, you know, that you're I'm that I'm responsible for you to do this job. And why don't you do the job? Why don't you tell me what's going on? Communicate, okay, you know, like help me help you.

So many things that we would call disengagement, just not communicating, you know, it's not just not taking ownership, but it's really it's not it's not communicating and knowing what to communicate. There's a lot of reasons. Well, you know, we care about the outcome so much that we just flat can't understand why you are not saying anything here and we see problems that are just blaring at us, obvious, and they just walk right past like they're oblivious. That it's like you look at people sometimes as leaders and we wonder, you know, are you just like a zombie checked out in another land? Are you possibly even an alien? Do you are you here on planet Earth with me? How could you not say something when you saw that?

Why Employees Don’t Speak Up at Work

And we assume that they don't care. They're just sometimes we just think, well, you're just, you know, you're just not intelligent enough. You can't do this job, really. And then we get mad and we we get mad and then things get worse is what happens, okay? It doesn't help. People don't engage when we try to get them to engage. They just clam up for them, be quiet and report and speak and engage and participate in what we want them to participate in for the benefit of everybody. They benefit less.

You know, my my my wife brought the TSA idea to the to our hay yard where our I have a hay feed company here in Las Vegas and she is telling people that work here, part of our team, she's telling people and in the in our boarding barn, in our horse barn, you know, using the TSA slogan, if you see something, say something. Okay, and at TSA, you've probably all heard that.

And at TSA we understand why it matters, okay, because the stakes are obvious. We know what terrorism is, most of us, a lot of us lived through you know the live through terrorism. And so the stakes are obvious to us. And so we're we're inclined to more inclined, I believe, to say something because we understand why. The stakes are obvious.

So question is is how do we create that same level of awareness and urgency with people at work and another question is why aren't they why aren't people saying something when they see something okay and a lot of times that we as leaders we're making the wrong assumptions we're just assuming like I said that people don't care that they're not well they're not engaged but we're assuming that they're just like checked out that they're not mentally present we assume that they are the problem. Okay. That's that's what we're assuming. And I have done this for a lot of years, so I know, and not only have I done it, I've seen it. Because I mean, really, it we have to go way out of our way to think something else other than what I just stated, okay?

And that is is that people don't care. You would assume a lot of us, we would just assume that people don't care. And that's easy to think that way.

Decision Points and Employee Awareness

So at our company, we teach people to we do our best to train people to recognize decision points, okay? We have a we have everybody carries around a little card. I'm showing this on it's a little, it's kind of like a three by five card, it's a little, little card. If you're on video, you can kind of see it. It looks like the words were kind of blurry. But anyway, it's basically this card. The first step is it, if it is, is to recognize which is developing the habit of awareness. The habit of awareness of what? To become aware that you're at a decision point. A decision point meaning.

I see something, okay? So now the question is, is I have to decide. First of all, I'm aware that I'm at a decision point. That's the first part, okay? Just becoming aware that I'm at a decision point. Hey, I'm at a I'm at a decision point. Stop. And then deciding, am I going to take action or not, okay? And then we have steps that follow that to make sure that you know that to make a recommendation, to investigate how long to do that. And then how to create a trigger so it gets reported and all of that is on this sheet. But the questions is like there's literally hundreds of these decisions that we run into at work every single day that our people do and that we do. We run into these decision points. Hundreds, okay? And a lot of times, a lot of times what's happening, what's actually happening in people's heads is first of all, they don't know if it matters.

Okay. They don't know if this is a decision point to even be a decision point because they don't know if it matters. They don't know what the expectation is. They don't know how things are supposed to go. So they just see something, they make an assumption, and then they move on, okay? They they do nothing because they don't know they don't know if it matters. That's part of their job training. They don't know what the expectation is. And they don't know if they should solve it or report it, okay? They really don't know.

Psychological Safety in the Workplace

If they should solve it or report it. So those are the employees might think, well, hey, I see a problem, I'll just fix it myself. Or they'll think, I don't I don't want to bat bother my manager, I can take care of this. Or they might they might think, well, somebody else will take care of this. Or they might think, if I report this, I'll get in trouble, okay? They might think that you'll that their manager will believe that they caused the problem so they don't report it. They also might think that you see them as incapable if they report a problem. Hey, I saw a problem, I don't know how to fix it, and so therefore, if I say that to my manager, I'm perceived as incapable, therefore, I'm gonna do nothing, okay?

This is kind of where this is where one of the places where psychological safety comes in. The question is: is do people feel safe speaking up? When I say feel safe.

Or do they they trust it's safe to speak up? I mean, do they trust what? Feel safe from what? Okay, this is important. It's not just, I feel safe. Feel safe from what? We need to know that if we're gonna create the environment or if we're gonna use our influence to with our pe if we're gonna use our influence so that people quote unquote feel so how how are we gonna do that? We need to know what we're talking about. And what we're talking about is feeling safe from value judgment. Feeling s feeling safe that it's okay. You won't think I'm an idiot. You won't think I'm incompetent. You won't think I'm stupid. You won't think I suck as employee. You won't think that you're smarter than me. You don't think all the different things that are natural, normal ways that human beings think because all of us are out there all day long trying in this world to prove to ourselves and the rest of the world that we're good enough.

Why People Stay Silent at Work

That's why people don't speak up. That's really the core and the root of this whole thing, okay? They just think that if they do, this whole thing if they do speak speak up, this whole thing is gonna backfire on them, okay? So feeling safe to speak up is something that we can use our we can't control them and we can't say, there's safety here and it's just there. It's something there. The only thing that's there is our influence, which means how they feel about the way that we relate to them, the way that we come out, what we say and how we act towards them. That is the key that we can do, that we can make a difference in, okay?

So, the, in our system, okay, our system goes like this that I just showed you on that little card. We all have a card that we carry around, all the people here. I don't know if they all carry it around all the time.

But if they they have a card, if they ever wanted to, they could say, wait a minute, I'm at a decision point. Let me see. I'm gonna go through this one, two, three, four, until you really form the habit. That's more for new people because depending on the size and scope of what it is, you can handle it within just a few seconds, or you can handle it within a few minutes. Usually it's not a big long process. But I'm gonna break it down so it's gonna sound a little bit bigger and longer than it actually is most of the time.

Recognizing Decision Points in the Workplace

The first of all is like I said, is to recognize the decision point. That means I recognize that I'm at a chance that I need to make a decision whether to act on this or not, okay? So I recognize that I'm there. The second is to choose to act, to own it, to choose to take action, okay? The third part of our process is to prioritize how urgent this is. That means, is this an emergency? Do I need to do something right this second?

Is somebody in danger? I need to prioritize it. Can this this wait till the end of the shift? Can this wait till the end of the get my manager gets out of a meeting? Whatever the thing is, okay? When am I going to communicate this? That's the next part. Third step is to investigate. What that means is how long am I going to take to determine a solution that I'm going to recommend? Because we always ask that people bring a recommendation. Don't bring and hand me a problem and say adios.

Bring me a problem that you recognized and keep a hold of it and say, here's what I have, here's what I recommend. What do you think about my recommendation and what I should do about this issue, okay? And then most of the time, I'll give my input, or their manager will give their input, and then they will keep a hold of the, they will still own the problem and go take handle the solution.

The the fourth part of our system, our written system, is that after they've come they've investigated it, which can be just a a minute to think about it, or it can be actual, you know, some process of taking. We ask them to decide how much time that they're gonna take in investigating and to do use their best judgment, to use an appropriate time to do their best educated guess, because that's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be a guess from somebody who is right there in the middle of it, the closest up front, but it's still gonna be a guess, right?

Chances are that the company, the management, that there's already a system. It's might not be the first time that you've seen this. Maybe it is, maybe it's not, but nonetheless, you're just you recognize that you don't have the the authority a lot of times to be able to make the decision. So therefore you're bringing a recommendation.

The Importance of Communication and Accountability

Then the last step is just is to communicate it, okay? Now, if you have, if you communicate it immediately, then how are you going to communicate it? You gonna send a text because it we need a clear communication? Are you gonna make it are you gonna make it a phone call or in person? Because then there won't it won't be documented. So you need to choose how you're gonna the best way to report it. And if you're not gonna report it immediately, you need to create a a trigger. You need to record the recommendation, the problem, the recommendation, and create a trigger. A trigger means rather than just take a note, write it on a note card, write it on your hand, put it on a note in your phone, or and then say, okay, I'm gonna, I've got this recorded, I'll remember at the end of the day, I'll do XYZ. Most of the time, a vast majority of the time, if you have to remember to go back to your note, you're gonna forget it or you're gonna forget to do it when you want to do it. A trigger means something that happens to you, you don't have to happen to it.

For example, an alarm on your phone, a notification from your calendar notification or a reminder notification, some sort of something that will come to you to trigger you to go to your notes that wherever the container is where you stored the the problem and the recommendation and that triggers you, okay, this is when I said I was gonna do this and then do it, okay? So because so many times, how many times have you, I can assure you, I hear it.

A lot less over time, but I hear I nonetheless how many times have you heard, well, I was going to tell you but right? But then I got busy, but then a five customers came in, but then this happened, but then you know, you know, it's just so busy out here all the time, blah blah blah blah blah. All the things that have that can all the reasons and excuses people can have because they didn't create a trigger. And I will tell you, if I'm, if I say, I'll just do this later, it's not gonna happen, even if I put a note to it. If I put a note, if I if I record it somewhere, it has a little bit higher odds of it happening. But the odds of it happening right on time, unless I create a trigger, are pretty low. So that's just the way we work as humans.

Fear, Employee Engagement, and Psychological Safety

So that's the way our system works. But the real, the real deal here, my friends, we can build all these cool systems that we want, and we have a really good and complete and thorough system for becoming aware and then the process of what to do to be more engaged, okay? But the real question is, is why don't people use all the systems and why do we f still think that we have such low engagement all the time, okay? Why do we still think that people aren't given all that they have? Why do we think that they're not engaged? Why don't they think that they care enough? Why aren't they really going to bat for us? Why do they act like they don't care when there's so much at stake? And why when they see that? Why can how can they just walk past and do nothing? And most of the time it's not because they don't care. You know what it is? Underlying almost all of it is fear, okay? It's fear. And so what do people fear, okay?

Really what they fear is what you're gonna think, what their manager is gonna think, what the other people, what their other crew, their other team is gonna think, what what their peers are gonna think and what their leaders are gonna think. And they're trying to control what their what people are gonna think about them. And it's so much easier, rather than to risk looking bad or or in the group or with your leader, it's just so much easier to say nothing. You can safety up and say nothing, okay? People don't want to feel inadequate, okay? And that's what they perceive is going to happen. Most disengagement actually is not laziness, okay? It's it's people just trying to protect themselves. There, there's so much at stake, okay. There's so much at stake that people are a, afraid to risk, you know, their job. It's their job, it's their livelihood, it's their money. They, it's important that they try to control the narrative of what their manager and their leaders think about them because their money's at stake and also the people, their co-workers.

A Real Example of Workplace Disengagement

Let me give you an example, okay? This is a real example. We have about a mid-sized truck. So the gross vehicle weights about 20, I don't know, I forgot 25,000 pounds, 26,000 pounds. We use it to haul hay. It's called a stack retriever. It picks up a a block of hay, a block of hay meaning from 64 to about 96-100 pound bales of hay. It picks it up from the ground, it lays it down on the bed, it hauls it somewhere, stands it up and and so we use this stack retriever to deliver hay to horse stables here at our company. So I needed to talk to the driver one day and I he wasn't hearing me. I couldn't get a hold of him. I don't anyway. I went into the yard and he was over at the stack retriever at the truck, and I think there was some equipment running, he couldn't hear me. So I opened the the driver's side door and he was on the passenger side doing a pre-trip, inspecting the truck or something. And I opened the door to talk to him and I saw that there was a block of wood sitting on the seat, a block of wood that we use with our hay squeeze for for another for another job. We there I couldn't imagine why I said to him, “Block of wood didn't belong on the seat of the stack retriever. “So I said, “Hey why is this block of wood sitting on the seat?” And he said, “Yeah, I forgot to tell you, but the park break doesn't work. And so I got this, I took this block of wood from where we use it over there. And I've been using the block of wood to, you know, for a park break.”

A Dangerous Workplace Communication Failure

And so I was kind of astounded because, you know, we go to a lot of different piece properties on, you know, some of it's on hilly country where it's not straight flat, you know, and we're carrying 64 to 96-100 pounds plus the weight of this big truck, plus the weight of the implement that's behind it. It's kind of like a harrow bed that picks up this giant stack of hay.

And we're sitting there and he's and because the park brake doesn't work, he's getting getting out of the truck and trying to block the wheel with this block of wood before it gains enough amendment momentum to just go over the block of wood. He's putting himself in danger and putting all the property and possibly other people and horses in danger.

I mean the risk of what could happen in this situation is there's a tremendous amount of risk in using a block of wood when you're out operating this stack retriever as your park break, okay? And I was I was extremely surprised that this is one of those moments. And I said to myself, I had I removed myself from the situation for a while. I had to think about this. And I thought, “How could this be? I mean, how could you not? We ask that people report, you know, everything that has to do with repairs on equipment and vehicles. We ask that to know everything immediately when it happens. So why is this not happening?” And this isn't a ne, a ness, a new guy, or this isn't a guy that's you know, not intelligent. This is one of our top guys. I'm like, what the how could this even be possible? You know, and so then I started thinking all the things. What's the matter with you? You know, you don't care, you know, can't you see the risk? What you know, and trying to make all these value judgments about my people. And then I stopped about the driver. I stopped and I said, “Okay, wait a minute, where is this coming from?” And I investigated a little bit and I remembered and I talked to him. And really where it was coming from was the fear. He thought that his job was to solve the problem. And he had come up with a solution that seemed to be working fine for him. And he was afraid that if he reported it, that he would be seen as incapable, not competent.

Fear, Judgment, and Workplace Communication

Just because basically the relationship that he had with his dad. Now, we all bring some people, some stuff to work. This thing could have killed somebody, it could have been a disaster. And I'm not saying that the stuff that we bring to work is acceptable. I'm not saying that it's okay to use a block of wood for a park break, okay? What I am saying is this: if if we as leaders do like my initial reaction and start judging the person and coming up and putting thoughts in their head instead of understanding what's really happening. If we understand what's happening, that gives us a chance to be able to react in a way to be able to solve the problem. So what you do with this problem is what you do with this problem, okay? This this guy still works here, and that's just what I did. Now I'm not saying that that's what you need to do or it's a good idea. You can think what you want about that. And you will, but the way I handled it was I there was a consequence for the behavior, but I and I made it how you know, made it be known how important and what a high risk this was. And I also made it be safe to be known that things are gonna go this way, it's not gonna be your fault, and the expectation is not that you solved the problem. The expectation is that you communicate the problem so that we together can solve the problem.

And the reason I bring this up is because it's just such an outstanding, not outstanding, astounding example of the things that can go wrong when people don't say anything.

You know, in the medical profession you can imagine pilots of commercial airlines and people that are responsible for other people in every way, in big ways and smaller ways, and just trying to protect ourselves, okay? Human beings, just being human beings, not engaging, not participating, not being a part of the problem, just protecting themselves, trying to control the narrative about what other people think about us because it's such a big deal. This is normal human behavior, I'm telling you. And we as leaders can make a difference.

How Leaders Create Employee Trust and Engagement

And the reason that I couldn't make things better for so long is because I would just get madder and matter and raise the consequences and raise the stakes with the people and they just shut down more and more and more. It just backfired on me. It didn't work. So here's the deal. You can let just come back to this example of the the block of wood and the stack retriever. Like I said, maybe it was a good idea and maybe it wasn't a good idea to still have.

This driver work for us. But I do, I can guarantee you this: the way that I react with that makes a difference on what happens at this company to him and to all the other people that work here in the future. How I handle that and how I relate to those incidents creates the ability, the environment, the way I relate to them is what allows them, if they will, and they don't always, but at least it gives them the chance to, to trust. It gives them the chance to trust that everything's going to be okay if they bring up the issues of the day, if they if they engage and participate and be as good as they can be in the job. You know, we human beings, we just don't want to look in incapable. He thought that reporting it would make him look bad. He wasn't a bad employee. Things that I've already said here.

Why Employees Disengage

This it always comes back to the reason people don't engage always comes back to what people believe about themselves internally, okay? And a lot of times they don't even know. They're just reacting on pre-programming and what their subconscious is driving them to do. They're not even aware that they're not, they're like, they're not even aware that they hit a decision point and consciously didn't do anything about it until they go back and say, “Well, yeah, I was gonna do something.” To them, they just react and move on, react and move on without looking at the consequences and mistakes, okay? You know, we as leaders and managers, we cannot control how people think and feel. That's we're not going to get it done. But we can, what we can do is we can influence and we have tremendous influence on what people think, think and how they feel, okay? We can create the environment, the space, what that means is I create the environment and the space to have trust that people can bring stuff that they can bring, that they can engage, that they can see problems and correct them and report what's broken. It's not just about reporting what's broken, okay? This is about fully engaging with all that you have to make your contribution to this team that what you're here to do, okay? There's so many ways to do it. That's just one example.

How Leaders Increase Employee Engagement

If you blow up, like I said, it's gonna make it, it's gonna make it worse, okay? We our influence, the way that we relate to people, that is what gives them the the the willingness. That influence gives them the willingness and the desire. They start to feel trust, they start to open up, they start to bring more things, and then we don't beat them up for doing it, and then we start to have more engagement and then we start to have more productivity and that's the way it rolls. Productivity, higher performance, things start to roll a hell of a lot better. And people are happier, by the way, and they don't you have less turnover. we have to believe that we're not better than people because we see a problem and they don't. We have to believe that we're not smarter. I don't even know if we necessarily care more. Maybe we I I think that it's not really about how much you care. Their job isn't necessarily to care as much as you do. Maybe your stakes are higher. But if we want people to care and invest and line up for us and be on our side and participate and and put themselves in and invest, they've got to feel like they're going to be okay if they do it. Like that they're that they're valued, that we're going to hold, that we're always going to respect and hold them in high regard.

Judge the Work, Protect the Person

And that is how we get it done right there. We can't think that we're better than other people because if we do, it comes out, okay? It comes out. They know you don't have to say it. It comes out, okay? We respect people. We always give them in high we hold people in high res regard. We always protect the person, even if we have to fire them, even if we have to put them on a disciplinary, whatever, okay? We always protect the person. We always hold them in high regard.

Okay, no matter what. And we always judge the work because we must judge the work, okay? But we don't judge the person, we protect the person. People start to feel safe, they start to trust, they start to speak up. And some of this is training, some of this is awareness. But the choice to engage is gonna come as a result of our influence as leaders, okay? We can create, we can say it. We can say judge the work, protect the person. We can say that we don't think that that we're on an even par with all the people that work for us or that we lead. We can say that we don't judge them, but we have to believe it in our heart and soul because it it comes out that way. The way that we relate to them and to the world, they know, okay? And so the more that we can internalize that and believe it and change ourselves is the more that we're gonna have the influence that is gonna they're going to participate and engage, okay? We can't fix everything, but we our influence is tremendous, like I said.

Why Employee Engagement Matters

When engaged people save tons of time, they save tons of money, they save tons of suffering, they save tons of accidents and they just solve so many problems so early before they can we can nip problems in the bud, okay? And that that is the the real deal here. When people act like they care, when when people when you perceive people care, when they're contributing and engaging, and you like, wow, you really did a good job, you act like you really care. The way that we get that is how we treat them. And that's where the work were what the worth, Worth Work System is. Judge, judge the work, protect the person that is how we get people to engage and to participate at a higher level. Because unless we exert that influence, people are going to continue to disappoint us by not speaking up, not participating, and not engaging to the level that we expect.

Recognizing Signs of Workplace Disengagement

The example I gave you with the block is extreme, and that's why I use it. So hopefully you'll remember. But people don't say things. If you hear things like, “Oh, oh yeah, I was gonna tell you.” Or I forgot about this.” Or, “Yeah, well, I wasn't sure that that. Well, I thought that this would work for now.” All of these different things are reasons, excuses, or that's language that is are clues to you that people are disengaged and they're they don't have the willingness to open up and engage because they're afraid of how they're going to be perceived. They're afraid they're gonna be judged for what they did.

So if we always separate what people do from who they are, we let them know and we act in a way where we always respect and regard human beings at work here, regardless of what they do, even if they use a block for a park break, we still, we judge the work and there's a consequence for it, but we always hold the person in high regard and we don't think less of them and tell them any of that. We don't behave that way. That is how we make the difference as leaders.

Thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. Remember, my friends, your value is non-negotiable. Stay with me.

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In this episode, Shane Jacob explains the real reason employees stay quiet at work even when they see serious problems happening. Instead of assuming employees do not care, Shane breaks down how fear, judgment, and workplace pressure cause people to hide mistakes, avoid communication, and disengage from their teams. Through a real story from his own company, Shane shows how The Worth Work System helps leaders create more trust, earlier communication, better participation, and fewer costly problems inside the workplace.