Is Project Team Member Engagement Like Employee Engagement?

I do believe that project teams are more engaged than other employee. There are several reasons for it.

1. Project teams have a clear goal set and when every project team ruminates over an issue, they come up with lot of reasons for taking up some position/stance/solution
2. There are many opportunities to interact with other subject matter expert and this opens up a new perspective to the project team and this opportunity is lacking in other "silo setup".
3. Project team also has the opportunity to certain uncertain requirements/needs and this also forces team members to be engaged

Posted: Sep 1, 2015 5:59 AM

I believe that, in general, project team members are more engaged than the average employee. The reasoning behind this, I believe, is the essence of team selection in itself. A project team member is chosen because it is believed that they can contribute to the project. I'm not naive enough to believe this is true in all cases but I believe in general that the project team selection and assignment process (Acquire Team in PMBOK) will develop a more engaged team.

Posted: Sep 2, 2015 10:13 AM

Good question raised Bill. Both Balaji and Paul are correct in their observations. When a person is selected for a project, it gives him/her a moral boost. One naturally will try to prove the worth of the selection decision. Moreover, failure(In all the aspects) in project is more visible than in day to day operation and it spreads to different teams.
In a projectized company performance(Again in all aspects) determines the chance to get absorbed in the next project. Otherwise, one needs to sit on the "Bench".

Posted: Sep 3, 2015 2:57 AM

I certainly hope project team engagement is not like employee engagement. Whenever Executives speak about Employee Engagement, I always seem to get caught up in cynical humorous commentary. For example:

-- Most employees don't want to be engaged. Engagement often leads to marriage and most employees don't want to be married to their jobs.
-- In the US, about 50% of marriages end in divorce. Do you still want me to be married to my job?
-- Instead of engagement or marriage, why can't we just be friends. Friends with benefits.

Posted: Sep 3, 2015 1:11 PM

My experience with project teams is that they tend to immerse themselves in completing the project than in normal operations.

I think there may be a variety of circumstantial reasons for this, including a desire to not fail on a project. Additionally, they are likely a member of this team due to their expertise in a specific area, and being able to perform focused work in a domain of expertise is more enticing to people.

Beyond that, in the projects I've been on, the PM had little actual authority, but was able to contextualize the project in terms of its benefit to the company. Additionally, the PM was able to meet with team members and ask how they might want like to develop personally as a result of being on the project. The PM would then look for ways to have each team member develop proficiency in those areas.

A project allows for flexibility, innovation, team troubleshooting in ways that most organizations don't allow for with operational staff. This naturally results in project teams enjoying higher levels of interest and worthy challenge in their jobs than their operational counterparts.

Posted: Sep 3, 2015 7:15 PM

Project teams are very different from the normal teams working on operations. They may have come from the same source but projects are short assignments driven by time and budget and there is a need to handle things very differently. Project Managers are much more communicative as they know they have to establish employee loyalty by motivation and thus engage them in the project work. So in projects we have more of building trust, encouraging employee autonomy, and linking work to the overall purpose. That is why we have more active and engaged project teams.

Posted: Sep 6, 2015 5:08 PM

Project team have constraint of time and money and beside their progress is being monitored closely .

Posted: Sep 7, 2015 5:22 AM

Dear Bill
Interesting this reflection on the theme: "Is Project Team Member Engagement Like Employee Engagement?"

Thanks for sharing

Important point to remember: "The drivers for engagement consist of building trust, encouraging employee autonomy, and linking work to the overall purpose"

Posted: Jan 28, 2020 2:05 PM