Is Positive Deviance the Secret Sauce for Employee Engagement?

What really is Positive Deviance?

Positive deviance refers to behaviour that diverges from organisational norms but does so in a constructive manner. One might imagine an employee who stays back to assist a colleague struggling with a deadline, or someone who mentors juniors without any formal mandate, or even an individual who quietly introduces a small process innovation using the same resources as everyone else. Such actions are rarely celebrated, yet they ripple outwards shaping morale, strengthening trust, and slowly building a sense of shared ownership.

Whilst organisations often rely on formal engagement programmes, the extant literature suggests that informal, bottom-up behaviours may actually hold greater potential for long-term engagement. These spontaneous, self-driven acts of initiative – sometimes deviations, yet positive in essence – can sustain an organisation far beyond what periodic incentives or structured programmes shall achieve.

What I Did (and What I Found)

Using ISM, I worked with domain experts to identify a set of positive-deviance facilitators – the organisational conditions that encourage constructive deviation. We then examined how these facilitators interrelate and how they ultimately converge on employee engagement.

Some of the critical facilitators included:

• leadership and culture that tolerate, and at times value, non-conformist yet constructive behaviour;

• psychological empowerment, whereby employees feel trusted and capable of taking initiative;

• systems that allow minor departures from rules without fear of needless penalties;

• peer support and a trust-driven climate that socially legitimises unconventional but helpful actions.

Through ISM analysis, these facilitators formed a clear hierarchy – with foundational conditions such as culture and empowerment sitting at the base, and others, such as peer support and initiative, emerging as more outcome-oriented layers. When these foundational layers are strong, positive deviance is more likely to flourish, and, as the findings suggest, employee engagement rises correspondingly.

Why this Matters – Especially Now

Organisations are conceptualising engagement as a ‘programme’: reward systems, listening forums, feedback loops and so on. Yet these mechanisms, while useful, often create engagement that is transient. The research plausibly indicates another path cultivating an environment in which employees naturally choose to go beyond the minimum.

In such settings, employees begin to perceive themselves not as passive rule-followers but as capable contributors, empowered to refine processes, raise their voice when systems fail, and innovate subtly within their spheres. This sense of ownership, once developed, is difficult to manufacture through policy alone.

Given the increasingly complex and uncertain organisational landscapes, fostering positive deviance may well be a strategy that helps institutions remain adaptive, humane and genuinely engaging.

What Leaders and Managers Can Do

If you manage teams or influence organisational culture, the study offers several practical takeaways:

• Encourage psychological empowerment: employees shall be trusted, granted autonomy, and reassured that initiative is welcome.

• Build a supportive culture: create conditions where peer respect, openness and constructive debate are valued as much as compliance.

• Avoid over-regulation: norms shall be flexible enough to permit deviations that genuinely improve systems.

• Recognise small but meaningful acts of positive deviance: subtle reinforcement signals that constructive initiative is not merely tolerated but appreciated.

• Adopt a long-term outlook: genuine engagement requires consistent cultural shifts rather than short-term programmes.

If employees are viewed merely as executors of predetermined rules, organisations shall, unsurprisingly, design systems that limit their potential. However, once employees are recognised as creative, resourceful humans, capable of constructive deviation when circumstances demand it, the entire engagement equation begins to shift.

The research suggests that positive deviance is not a threat to be managed but a resource to be nourished. It reminds us that engagement does not begin with management; it begins when individuals dare to care beyond what is required.