Employees are your most important asset – Engage them, Lesson 12 Employee Engagement

Gallup’s most recent State of the American Workplace survey found a shocking trend among employees working in the United States: In the survey conducted in 2016 and 2017, they found that 70% of employees felt disengaged at work and have felt that way for quite some time.

This is an incredible figure when considering the myriad benefits of businesses prioritizing employee engagement.

Exploring Engagement

Employee engagement defined, consists of the satisfaction of an employee’s basic needs, individual needs, teamwork needs and personal growth needs. When these needs are met, employees develop love and passion for their craft, and according to Gallup “their individual performance soars, and they propel their team and organization to…higher levels of productivity, safety, and quality.”

This all makes sense in an obvious way, but Gallup was able to then quantify the impacts of having an engaged workforce versus a disengaged one on various productivity-related metrics. The results should turn executive and managerial heads quick enough to cause whiplash.

Why is Employee Engagement Important?

• 4/10 workers are actively disengaged when they get little or no feedback
• 6/10 employees are disengaged when they are not working towards goals to help improve their performance
• 2X as likely to be actively disengaged if employees are ignored by their manager
• 39% of employees report that they do not feel appreciated at work
• Fewer than half of employees know if they are doing a good job

Across those surveyed by Gallup, companies with more engaged employees saw 41% less absenteeism, 59% less turnover, 70% less safety incidents, and 21% higher profitability.

I won’t continue to inundate you with percentages, just know this is by no means an exhaustive list and many more improvements are not included here.

What an employee wants

The people within any work environment need a definite set of purpose, and to understand their function in the larger grand scale picture. They need the physical tools to fulfill this purpose, and to occasionally feel recognized for serving in the way they do. A valued opinion is a huge essential.

Another thing that keeps workers engaged is feeling like a co-worker or multiple co-workers care for their well being and the progress they’ve made in their craft. This is an important question, because they should feel like they are progressing professionally and not mired in stagnation.

To summarize all this, an engaged employee wants to feel like they are contributing in a meaningful way to their place of work. They want to feel valued and respected by the people they work with. These are not outlandish demands. But they are too often overlooked.

89% of employers think people leave for job for more money when in fact only 12% of employees leave their job for more money. 75% of people voluntarily leaving jobs don’t quit their jobs; they quit their bosses.

Yes, we all want to feel less bad about ourselves and often say so and so left due to more money. In essence, this is typically not true. The end result is an offer of new employment from a disengaged employee with a benefit of more money.

The more money is the end result of the employee seeking employment elsewhere from being disengaged. This is not the reason they started to look. The reason employees always tell you it is because of money is because it is easier to say than I have not been receiving feedback, recognition and have not had my goals clearly spelled out.

We need to spend time engaging our workforce because if we do not, we surely have competitors whom would love to support our great talented employees.

Employee Engagement Strategies

While every person in a company has a hand in sparking engagement, it is often the manager or a supervisor who ends up being the tastemaker for an engaged environment.

The best thing a supervisor can do for an employee is to make sincere recognition for a job well done a practiced pattern of behavior. Gratitude is a low-cost, high-yield activity that never fails to boost morale and good will.

Additionally, a supervisor should prioritize helping the individual to grow in their skills and acumen. One great method for this is scheduling one-on-ones with the people you oversee and soliciting feedback and asking about the progress on projects they are working on. Done correctly, this act shows the individual you care and want to see them succeed.

Finally, a supervisor or manager should do what they can to provide educational opportunities for employees. This can take the form of offered presentations, short-term classes, site tours or sitting in on peripherally related meetings.

Employee Engagement Activities

• Celebrate personal wins
• Discuss work life balance
• Have more fun
• Hire a motivational speaker
• Send out an employee survey and solicit real feedback
• Learn what your employees are passionate about
• Share how your employee’s role impact the company’s performance
• Build more trust
• Create a wellness newsletter
• Incentivize goals
• Have a personal development workshop
• Implement continuous feedback
• Encourage experimentation

I could go on and on but you do not need a 100 bulleted list of ideas to engage your employees, instead, what you need to do is to open the lines of communication, set clear goals, provide feedback and recognition while getting to know your team.

Remember all the results and objectives you are trying to accomplish are done so by your people. Engage your team and treat them as what they are – the most important asset to your organization!

For more information on employee engagement, I recommend the following books for your further development.

• Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve
• Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT
• Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others
• On Fire at Work: How Great Companies Ignite Passion in Their People Without Burning Them Out
• The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces they Want, the Tools they Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate

If you have any questions or comments about employee engagement or any other leadership topic, please contact us at Leadershipism