Posts Tagged ‘employee engagement’

Employee Engagement is a hot topic as the shortage of high performing talent increases.  A May study from McKinsey & Co. found that by 2018, the U.S. will face a shortage of 1.5 million managers who can use data to shape business decisions. And the shortage gets even larger for non management employees, especially knowledge workers in the areas of  healthcare, technology, and accounting.

Another study in June 2011 from Mercer, the global HR consulting firm, found that nearly  one third (32 percent) of American workers are considering leaving their organization, which is 40 percent increase since 2005. So not only is there a shortage but there is also a higher risk of losing the talent you already have on your team.

So what should you be doing to nurture and increase employee engagement on your team? Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Before hiring ask yourself does the candidate fit culturally with the organization. In other words, does the potential employee have the same set of values the company lives every day?  More often than not employees fail in the short term because they don’t “fit”  the culture of the organization, not because they don’t have the skills.

Coaching Tip: Devise several interview questions that can illuminate a candidate’s values and/or use an assessment that measures values such as the Hogan Leadership assessment.

2. Once you have the right person on board, you need to keep them challenged which means providing them with opportunities for growth and development.  Development plans are an integral part of the talent management system and should be updated on a quarterly basis. The types of development can include special projects, rotation to a lateral position, matching a mentor with the employee, structured learning, and executive coaching.

Coaching Tip: It is critical that the employee be a part of their development planning process. Too often managers assume that an employee wants certain opportunities when they either may not want the opportunity at all, or the timing isn’t right for them due to a personal situation.

3. Demonstrate that you care about your employees by recognizing their good work and showing appreciation. The number one reason good employees leave a company  is because they don’t feel appreciated. Many managers feel that if they show too much appreciation and recognition that it will make performance correction more difficult.  Studies show that it takes upwards of 5 acts of appreciation to equal one act of criticism.  Keep track of your appreciation for others over a week, be purposeful by looking for the sparks of good work, potential, and recognize it.

Coaching Tip: Make sure that when you do provide recognition and appreciation that it be done in a timely manner and with sincerity.  There is nothing worse than receiving insincere appreciation. If you can’t be sincere, then don’t even bother.

4.  Trust is a critical component to employee engagement.  Employees who trust their co-workers, managers, and company generally have a higher level of engagement than those who don’t.  And the one area that will impact trust the most is transparent leadership.  Organizational transparency requires among other things, open access to information, and participation in decision making.

Coaching tip:  A higher degree of transparency will exist if communications are timely and frequent.  And remember to use different communication channels to satisfy the preferences of the multiple generations in the workforce-email, text, hard copy, meetings, video, etc.

These are all techniques that can be implemented in a short period of time that can provide you with some insurance in retaining your key employees. Which one do you plan to implement first?

The recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has many business owners and executives extremely concerned.  Using their unchecked powers, the NLRB is requiring all businesses, starting on November 1st, to have a mandatory posting reminding employees of their right to unionize.  This posting must also appear on any inter or intranet sites if personnel rules and policies are customarily posted there.

As a founder and entrepreneur the over reaching actions of the NLRB immediately make my blood boil.  In fact, why don’t we all send engraved invitations to union organizers!  The one big enemy of unions…happy and fully engaged employees.  I can guarantee that the employees of companies known for their strong culture and employee engagement aren’t sweating over this recent ruling because their employees have no reason to want a union.

So for any of you out there who are concerned that your employees maybe calling local union organizers after November 1st, I would start making changes now.

First watch this video from Air New Zealand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_xrPl_i9M8

Yes this is a bit extreme and you would probably never ask your employees to participate in a project like this.  But it should make you curious as to how far your employees would be willing to go for you and your company.

When was the last time that you asked them to commit to a project or initiative that was outside their comfort zone?  And what was their reaction?

If they pushed back on the idea, what strategy did you use to influence them into changing their minds so that they willingly and happily participated?

I would suspect that in the case of Air New Zealand, there was a mixture of leadership influence and personal motivation by the individual participants. The people that volunteered probably liked this type of attention and the opportunity to have “exposure” on a TV advertisement. While at the same time, there was a leader who had a vision and was able to passionately convey the vision and influence people to follow.

How effective are you at influencing others to follow? And are you creating an environment that encourages employee engagement?

As an update, the leader who had the vision is the silver haired guy, body painted as a baggage handler. He is the CEO of Air New Zealand  Now that’s leadership!

For those of you who are interested in learning more about employee engagement for your organization, I would personally recommend the following reading:

Drive by Daniel Pink

First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham

The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly and Patrick Lencioni

I have read all of them and they are excellent. They provide different perspectives and insights into employee engagement.  In addition, the following books are on my Kindle waiting to be read in the following order:

The CEO Chief Engagement Officer by John Smythe

The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy by Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith

Managing the Gray Areas by Jerry Manas

Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans

Here’s to all of you who embrace employee engagement as a key to organizational success and sustainability. Happy reading and learning.

The talent obsessed are companies like GE, IBM, and Procter and Gamble who really know their people: what strengths they have, what they value as an individual, their personalities, and what drove them to their achievements. Their obsession in understanding and developing their people has brought their organizations a higher level of success than many of their competitors.

Many of you reading this are thinking, “I don’t have the resources that an IBM has”.  ”How can our company manage our talent like a Fortune 500 company?” The answer is by focusing on the important and not the urgent and taking a longer term view of your company’s human capital resources.

Here are four steps to starting on the road to becoming talent obsessed:

1. As a leader, take ownership for the development of your employees. Incorporate learning into your regular staff meetings. Delegate the learning process to your team members so that everyone is involved in the process. Be on the look out for best practices that individuals possess and have them share with their team mates. This is a great development opportunity for both the presenter and other team members.

2. Make development of employees a critical success factor for all managers within your company.  Employee development should be a significant factor in performance reviews for managers.  One great way for managers to develop others is through coaching. And if managers don’t have the coaching skills, provide them with training and become a coaching role model to them.

3. Peel back the onion and ask a lot of  quality questions to understand how a person achieved their results. The more questions you ask, the clearer you will understand the skills and talent an employee possesses.  If you identify a skill the employee has that you weren’t aware of, figure out ways that the employee can build on this skill.  This may include delegating something on your plate, or assigning her to a new project.

4. Ask others who were working with or around the individual for their feedback. Structure the questions based on what you learned in step 3, while also asking questions that can broaden your knowledge of the employee’s core talent.

Once you have gained enough knowledge of the employee’s core skills and strengths, start looking at your organization’s needs in the next 12-18 months.  Are there upcoming projects in other parts of the organization, where this employee’s talents can shine? Is there an opportunity that will stretch the person to a higher level of mastery in that talent, or will it be too much of a stretch that could frustrate him?

To become talent obsessed, the focus needs to come from the top.  Those companies who have a long term commitment to the talent inside their company will see greater long term business results because their employees will have reached their true potential and be fully engaged.

In Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive and the underlying message is that a leader can provide a motivating environment but can’t motivate their employees; motivation comes from within an individual.

This goes entirely against the common belief that given more carrots, an employee will be motivated to behave in ways that will increase the success of a company. Yet, time and again, leaders have found that providing more money and better benefits, extrinsic motivators, only provide a short term effect on behavior change. Extrinsic motivators are not sustainable.

Last month’s newsletter outlined the Top 5 Leadership Mistakes and one of them was misunderstanding motivation.

I outlined the three attributes that when implemented effectively within the organization, can increase the long term behavioral changes a leader is looking to instill in the organization.

And what can a company expect from its employees when they provide an environment that provides for autonomy, mastery, and purpose?

An academic study by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in 2000 issue of American Psychologist showed that focusing on internal motivators can lead to a higher self-esteem and self-actualization while a focus on external motivators on average leads to lower self-esteem and self-actualization.

In turn, employees demonstrated a greater level of persistence, creativity, energy, and well being, which increased the performance level employees.

So if in fact employee performance increases with intrinsic motivators, why aren’t more companies creating and implementing a plan to transition to a culture of autonomy, mastery and purpose?  Because it is not easy! It is a massive shift in long term beliefs and requires both employer and employees to change their mind set as well as the way they work.

What are the critical success factors to transitioning your workplace to an intrinsically motivated organization? They are the three C’s.

1. Creativity: be able to devise innovative ways of working outside the traditional mode. Bring in outside assistance if you don’t find you are making the progress you desire.
2. Communication: changes to the work process need to be communicated to all employees in a multitude of methods. Communication should be ongoing and frequent and provide employees with the opportunity to have their questions answered.
3. Change Management: demonstrate how the changes will positively affect employees, create methods to identify employees who may be struggling with the changes, and have resources available to help them adjust.

How much time are you spending in meetings on a weekly basis? Many companies have a “meeting” culture and as a consultant to many small and mid-size companies, I find myself spending  time observing leaders in meetings as part of a development planning process.

So often I observe meeting participants becoming disconnected during the meetings because the content is boring and often predictable. I recommend that you use the “Stir Fry” method to meetings. Stir Fry meetings require an ongoing change of ingredients—agenda items, extreme heat–excitement and passion, and a secret sauce–this is the ”why” of a meeting, the goal that brings all the participants together.

So, if you are going to be spending a lot of time in meetings implement the stir fry framework. For some ideas that other CEOs have used, read this article from Fast Company http://bit.ly/hBUWlq.

The term employee engagement has become popular over the last decade, but what does it really mean and should it be the ultimate goal of an employer?  I think not.  I would argue that employee passion should be the ultimate goal and here is why.

Employee engagement is the state of employees being committed to the mission and vision of an organization which results in a higher level of performance that generally is only seen internally to an organization. My belief is that an organization not only strive for a high level of employee engagement but also focus on creating a high level of employee passion which can be seen externally and is displayed to the company’s community, whether it be local, regional, national, or global.

Employee passion is much like the concept that Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles wrote about in their book “Raving Fans”. The goal being that your employees are so passionate about the company they work for that they are recruiting future employees and bringing in new customers.  Much of the process of creating employee passion can be found in the book, “Raving Fans”.  As you read the book replace the word “customer” for “employee” to create a plan for developing a high level of employee passion in your company.

So why is it important to have a trusting workplace? And how do you know if you have one?

Studies show that a trusting workplace increases employees’ level of happiness, work effort, productivity, and engagement. It also provides an environment that encourages open communication and promotes people to share their ideas.  When people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, there is a greater capacity for innovation within an organization keeping a company current and relevant in the marketplace.

Evaluating the level of trust in your workplace

Below are eight factors that studies have shown influence trust in the workplace:

OPENESS: Do you as a leader display having an open mind? As a leader, when you show others around you that you are open to new ideas and encourage others to share their opposing opinions not only do you create an environment of trust but you are enabling innovation within the organization.       

VISION AND VALUES: Are both vision and values communicated and lived on a consistent basis?  Without a vision for your company and a set of values, your employees will not have a sense of direction.  When they understand where the company is headed and it will you get to there, they trust decisions that are being made in the organization because they understand them. The key is to make decisions consistent to your values. It isn’t enough to put values down on paper; they need to be demonstrated throughout the entire organization.

COURAGE: Do company leaders have the courage to do the right thing even if the decision or action could put them at risk?  It takes courage to stay the course when obstacles get in the way of your vision. Leaders often take the easy way out when faced with difficult challenges.  Those who are able to make the tough decisions which support the company’s values, build trust and respect amongst their team members. They do the right thing even if in the short term it impacts them in a negative way.

SHARED GOALS: Do employees understand how their individual goals impact the organization’s goals?  Goals that are shared build stronger and more committed teams. And when the goals are clearly linked back to the company’s vision, you are strengthening the understanding of your company’s journey and how you will get there.

COMMUNITY: Does your organization promote giving back to its community? Community service projects build relationships amongst employees and are viewed as not self-serving by employees. And, when employees are involved with the decision process of what projects the company should be involved with, they feel important and you show them that you value their opinions and ideas.

INTEGRITY- Do leaders keep their promise and commitments to employees?  Do they tell the truth to them?  When leaders are transparent and share information honestly, employees trust what is being told them. Promise and commitments are not just those that are made to individuals but to the organization as well. So what are those promises and commitments you make to an organization as a leader? They are things like stewardship of company resources including finances and human resources. They watch over the finances by making sound decisions and develop their employees’ talent to the best of their ability.

MANNERS: Are employees recognized for good work and thanked for their hard efforts? Companies whose leaders consistently thank, praise, and reward employees for their good efforts demonstrate good manners and increase the level of trust employees have in the company and their leaders.

CARE: Do employees feel like leadership cares about them? Companies with leaders who make all employees feel important and part of the team create a feeling of safety. They actively listen, are visible and accessible, and take an interest in people’s personal lives. Employees feel genuinely cared for by their employer.

If you really want to understand how your employees rate workplace trust, develop an employee feedback survey to determine what areas you and your organization need to improve on to increase the level of trust.  The sooner you identify the areas of needed improvement, the sooner you can put a plan of action into place to increase your employees’ productivity, engagement, and level of happiness.

A recent article from HR Specialist lists 15 questions you should ask new employees after their first 60 days of employment. Click this link to read the article http://bit.ly/9RATuy

I would argue that leaders should be asking many of these questions on an ongoing basis and not just after the first 60 days on the job. Asking these questions in an environment of trust and openness can enhance the engagement of employees and ultimately lead to higher productivity. The more conversations you have with employees about their expectations the more they will feel that you care for them. Remember that as a manager/leader you are the number one reason why an employee remains engaged and productive OR whether she leaves. Make time to ask these questions as well as others, it is one way to show you care!

If you have other questions that have worked for you to keep employees engaged, please share them with our readers