A lot of consultancies encourage their clients to consider their frustrated employees as traitors.

Gallup says the “actively disengaged” are “busy acting out their unhappiness.” “Every day,” it claims, “these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.” Globoforce included among its profiles of “five famously disengaged employees” the traitors Brutus and Benedict Arnold (whose engraving appears above).

The most “disengaged” are “corporate terrorists,” claims one self-described “HR pro” and blogger. These people “are the ones trying to sabotage everything you’re trying to do,” he asserts. “Your goal should be to remove the terrorists every time you catch them planting the cultural equivalent of an IED.”

There’s another possibility: that some of your employees are not being supported as they should be, and when you asked them to tell the truth on the latest survey, they did, which is – ironically enough – an act of loyalty.

An excerpt from Widgets on the serious misunderstanding of so-called “disengagement” was published today by Training magazine. You can find it here.