The 7 Keys to Ensuring Your Employees are Engaged
Taylor’s Musing: What does engagement mean to you and your organization? It is critical that leaders are keenly aware of the level of engagement within their organization. Organizations that understand the importance of and prioritize engagement not only attract and retain top talent, but also increase overall productivity throughout the organization and improve customer satisfaction. Check out this article that aligns with my C.A.R.E strategy and read about some tangible ways you can encourage employee engagement.
Employee engagement can mean a number of things to a number of different employees and employers. A quick online search will give you a myriad of definitions and differing philosophies. As seasoned executive coaches and Organizational development specialists, my team and I have worked with companies of all sizes with equally differing thoughts on engaging their employees. Given our experience, we believe employee engagement to mean the emotional state where one feels connected to their work beyond the simple day-to-day. To be an engaged employee is to feel passionate, committed, and energetic about what the work entails - enabling the employee to bring their best selves to the table when stepping in the door.
It's a relatively simple way to think about things. That said, when you look at many, if not most organizations (hospitals, schools, businesses, non-profits, etc.), you'll quickly find that most actually don't live up to the promise of engaging employee culture. Far too few organizations create an environment that's truly conducive for their employees to maximize their full potential, thus creating retention issues, cultural debt, politics, and reduced efficiency. While all of these can be addressed individually, the sum can, at worst, tank a business.
In order to maximize employee engagement, leaders and Human Resource professionals should consider the following:
Hire right: Get things right from the start. Bringing the right people in the door is mission critical. Hiring the right person from the get-go can help ensure high-quality engagement from the very beginning of their life within the company. Hire the wrong person, and everything that follows becomes an uphill battle.
Onboard Effectively: Surprisingly, many employers think about engagement as something that needs attention after someone has been at the company for some time. This could not be further from the truth. Many employees never fully engage, even from day one! Often it's simply due to poor onboarding practices by the company during the employee’s first 90 days. Effective onboarding ensures employees are clear what's expected of them, feel "safe" to ask questions, and are given both support and autonomy. In other words, give your employee the right tools and best treatment starting from day one.
Continually Clarify the Mission: Clarity of what the organization or team is trying to achieve becomes paramount in driving employee engagement. Understanding whether one is trying to summit Mt. Everest or explore the depths of the Mariana Trench makes a huge difference. Employees will prepare and plan very differently depending on the mission. If we are headed up Mt. Everest, then employees are preparing for cold weather, sleeping in tents, acclimating to elevation, ice-axes, and using oxygen. If we are headed to the bottom of the Mariana Trench then all of that stuff becomes useless. The same can be said of the best practices and processes employees have available to them, and what they choose to use depending on the mission.
Milestones + Momentum: If you want your employees to be engaged, then they need to get to play to their strengths, feel challenged, and be rewarded for their efforts, successes, and failures. To do so, employers should focus on setting meaningful milestones and clear expectations for what success looks like. This ensures that the employee(s) are progressing and feel like they have momentum within the business. The positive business benefits that come from an employee who feels they have momentum cannot be overstated.
Implement Feedback Loops - Implementing effective channels for feedback allow for a more fluid exchange of insights, requests, adjustments, problem-solving and creative thinking. Feedback should flow both vertically and horizontally within a business but often requires that some sort of system or process be set up to ensure it occurs on a regular basis. Simply trusting that people are willing to both share and solicit feedback regularly leaves many companies in less than desirable situations. At Better Faster Further, we advocate that organizations and leaders focus on "high frequency...low dose" feedback. Basically, this means that feedback comes often, but in smaller more palatable doses, which allows both the giver and the recipient to make subtle tweaks and adjustments in stride - rather than trying to turn the Titanic around after its too late.
Develop Your People: Engaged employees are developing employees. “Development” can be defined in as many ways as “engaged,” but, in general, it means that the employee is continuously learning and empowered to better themselves within the company. Almost everyone wants to feel like they are learning and growing over time. Employers should focus dedicated time and energy into checking with their employees and whether they are achieving the goals they want to hit. They should be challenging their employees to think about what is holding them back, and what the employee can do to unblock that. Everyone has hopes and aspirations, and employees notice when employers care about that.
Culture Matters: Culture is the glue that holds it all together. Every company has some sort of culture, regardless of whether they created it intentionally or not. As we all can attest, some cultures are amazing and some are toxic. The key differentiator is that the best cultures have been proactively curated with employees in mind. The best cultures tend to be "sticky" (in a positive way) and serve as the fabric that makes coming to work a meaningful experience...even when times get tough. With a foundation of professional respect, comradery, and an environment that feels safe, employees enjoy coming into work to do their best with people they rely on and can rely on them.
Each of these points can’t happen on its own. They are connected and need to be thought through carefully by leadership. If you want your employee to love the place they spend much of their days at, it takes the extra mile from the leaders of the company to show that they care about that experience. Show your employees their value, give them challenges they can meet, and establish a company culture that encourages and empowers them the moment they walk in the door. We all want fulfilling lives and careers. We can have both when we make employees, the people of the company, a priority.
Article by: HR Technologist