The 10 Million Dollar Gage for Employee Engagement

How much money is more than adequate for any general employee working in an organization? This is a seemingly simple yet a very hard question to answer. Money is supposed to be an important element influencing employee engagement. So what happens when money is kept out of consideration while determining the drivers for employee engagement.

With the above as the backdrop, the 10 million dollar gage for employee engagement is a useful construct to understand the level of employee engagement in an organization.

Let us assume 10 million dollar is more than adequate for any general employee working in an organization. What than means is that if a general employee gets 10 million dollars he rises above the need to work for purely economic or financial reasons.

So what would be the factors that would influence the engagement of such a general worker with the organization supposing he is given 10 million dollars. Following scenarios could be thought of as the possibilities that will emerge.

• Employee wants to continue working in the same field and in the same organization. This is the case of an employee who is passionate about the work she is performing. It also shows the strength of the culture and working environment in the organization.
• Employee wants to work in a different field but in the same organization. This is the case of an employee who has lost passion about the work she is performing and wants to get into another area she is interested in. It, however, shows the strength of the culture and working environment in the organization.
• Employee wants to continue working in the same field but in a different organization. This is the case of an employee who is passionate about the work she is performing. But it shows the culture and working environment in the organization has room to improve.
• Employee wants to work in a different field and in a different  organization. This is the case of an employee who has lost passion about the work she is performing and wants to get into another area she is interested in. It also shows the culture and working environment in the organization has room to improve.
• Employee does not want to work at all and wishes to quit the rat race. This would mean the employee was not enjoying the work she was performing and also not enjoying working in the corporate world. She was working due to lack of any other choice. And probably the only motive was to have some means to pay the bills.

The table below captures the above in a summarized form. It is clear from the table that there exists the case where someone may be wanting to quit the rat race altogether. This in some sense speaks about the prevalent culture in the corporate world, in general.



For any organization knowing the number of cases where the general employee would want to work in a different organization is a highly pertinent information. Higher employee engagement would mean working towards a situation where such cases are minimized.

HR folks in many companies run employee engagement/satisfaction surveys with lot of fanfare and drum-beating. These exercises become yearly rituals and provide good sound-bites to the top guys in management and HR. However, they generally fail to delivery anything concrete. The 10 million dollar gage can perhaps serve the purpose in a better manner and more efficiently.