# Engagement vs. satisfaction — the 'happy but lazy' trap

- **Episode:** [01](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/01.md) (2022-07-06)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** engagement-vs-satisfaction, happy-lazy-trap, employee-engagement
- **Time:** 5:10–8:25 (start 310s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/01?t=310](https://truthliesandwork.com/01?t=310)

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[5:10] Al Elliott: So 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?
[5:54] Leanne Elliott: Yes, 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