Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is all about how fulfilled and connected individuals feel to an organisation.  Simon Sinek describes it as a partnership between Employer and Employee.  It is  "how it makes you feel" as businesses are about people.  Employees  want to feel safe and cared for, and by developing human skills, such as listening, problem solving and giving feedback,  both parties will feel engaged.

It is not as easy as solving a problem of dissatisfaction and then thinking you will have immediate satisfaction.  Engagement is very complex as we are looking beyond whether someone is just happy.  Happiness, Well-being and satisfaction are all short term.  The longer term signs are:-

• Enthusiasm & dedication
• Connection to overall purpose
• Knowing that their contribution matters

If you were to classify your employees as to whether they were highly/moderately or hardly engaged where would you identify the gaps from the bullet points above.  Where has communication and connection slipped that they do not feel any of the above.   A common misconception is that by solving any dissatisfaction you have immediate satisfaction.  As an example the break room is unpleasant, you redecorate the break room but all you have created is neutrality, this was something that was expected it does not seem an enhancement. Satisfaction is connected to how trusted, respected and how interested the Employer is of you as an Employee.   

The Employer sets the tone by being confident about the direction of the Company, and the Employee takes responsibility for their own self motivation, their own levels of inspiration and commitment.  Dan Pink says that this is often about the level of autonomy you give your team.  Simple and short term tasks can be rewarded, but in business it is very rare for a task to be simple and short term.  Most employees are dealing with complexity and long term tasks, where they need to be creative and conceptual.  People need to have space,  to put their own mark on the task, choices as to which team members they work with and input on the right working environment. 

Pink gave examples of highly engaged workforces in his talk.  Call centres are not necessarily known for autonomy, however Zappos the online shoe ordering business, did away with call recording, or set times for the lengths of calls.  The only instruction they gave employees was "Solve the customer's problem".  This level of trust and freedom led to great results.  An Australian software company called Atlassian gave employees once a quarter a day to work on other areas of the business.  They then had to share what they had learnt or created.  Another call centre gave employees one hour off the phones every week, where they were asked to think about improvements but were encouraged with the hour to spend it away from the phones.  This was called the "Genius Hour"

Being involved and having space, gives you that self motivation which can work perfectly in partnership with the overall drive of a business.

Here are some indicators as to whether you have an engaged workforce:-

• Performance and productivity are high
• Employee referrals for jobs at the organisation
• Absence rates are low
• Organisation is successful
• Quality and standard of work is high
• Employees are loyal - high retention rates

Please do get in touch to have a workshop on Employee Engagement or one to one coaching bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk