You Make the Call Engaging with the Company Garbage 1. What about you? Millennials and Generation Y refer to the same thing-generally speaking, people born between the early 1980s and early 2000s. Does this range of birth years include you? Whether it does or doesn't, how would you characterize your personal atti- tude toward sustainability, especially in the workplace? How does your attitude toward sustainability reflect your attitudes toward such matters as the country's economic future and your own? 2. Hunter Lovins defines employee engagement as "the goal of creating supportive, collaborative, and reward- ing work environments." Compare her understanding of employee engagement with the principle of organi- zational commitment as it's characterized in the text. In what sense is developing employee engagement intended to go a step beyond fostering organizational commitment in workplace attitudes? Lovins also talks about employee integration, by which she means a company's goal of "integrating its sustainability strategies into employee job descrip- tions and employees' everyday jobs." In your opinion, what sort of policies and practices would be impor- tant in achieving employee integration over and above employee engagement? 3. "Again, what about you? Consider the definition of employee engagement in Question 2. Do you think that you'd be responsive to an employer's efforts to engage you in your job? What kind of values-in terms of both company objectives and employee rewards-would be most likely to engage you? Where would sustainability rank among those values? Or do you think that other factors would probably weigh more heavily in your attitude toward your job? What might they be? 4. Some experts report that employee engagement "has become the new Holy Grail for many organizations" or that it "has long been the Holy Grail for creating thriving and successful organizations." Robert A. Cooke, however, believes that achieving and optimizing employee engagement is more complicated than it may seem. Cooke, who's CEO of Human Synergistics International, a consultancy specializing in organizational culture and leadership and group and individual behavior, charges that the human capital consulting industry continues to sell the idea that a few sips from the Holy Grail of employee engagement will magically transform organizations and heal whatever ails them. While this is a good start, companies should go beyond this and get to the root of their organizational ills by using a true organizational culture survey to define, activate, and reinforce the behaviors that drive the right kind of engagement and optimize organizational performance. Review our discussion of organization culture in Chapter 2. Discuss the pros and cons of Cooke's statement that "truly understanding how to optimize performance in your organization requires understanding your culture."