Employee engagement

14 May Employee engagement

In these strange and challenging times it’s even more important to show our care and support for our colleagues. We all know the importance of employee engagement on important stuff such as customer satisfaction and profitability (if you don’t please ask and I will email you the research), and now engagement is important because it’s the right thing to do. If people are still working for us, or if they are furloughed, we need to show we care, that people feel supported and are informed about what’s going on in the business.

I want to share some frameworks and ask some questions to get you thinking about how you can boost engagement in these challenging times. And I want to be clear we aren’t experiencing this virus in the same way, so we need to be able to flex our approach to help our people.

The first framework is from the Engage for Success Movement which was created in 2008 to research employee engagement in the UK, and does great work to share the love for employee engagement. One framework E4S offers is the four enablers that contribute to successful employee engagement:

1. Strategic narrative – the story of the organisation, the purpose of the business and where it’s going, described in heartfelt and compelling words that put people and customers at the centre.

2. Engaging Managers – managers that agree priorities, give meaningful feedback, that coach, motivate and inspire us to be our best.

3. Employee Voice – people can contribute, are listened to and share their ideas on problems, solutions and possible improvements.

4. Organisational Integrity – values that are lived every day, where commitments are honoured and people are trusted. Doing the right thing in times of crisis can be hard, and these are the times where people will remember how they were treated. I appreciate that this is hard for many businesses right now – the immediate challenge of profitability and of keeping the business going versus engaging people and keeping people involved is real for many, and leaders and managers that take the time and care to listen, involve and do the right thing are creating loyalty, encouraging great ideas and engagement.

Ideas around the four enablers of engagement include:

Another way of exploring employee engagement is to look at the Gallup 12 questions. I want to be clear; engagement isn’t a survey; a survey is a way of measuring the levels of engagement in your business. By purely measuring engagement and doing nothing with the results can have a detrimental impact as people are expecting action and if you do nothing people are likely to be disappointed, frustrated or even feel betrayed.

The Twelve Questions give a clear insight into what you can do to boost engagement as part of your practise as a manager, and the questions are:

1. 1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. 2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
3. 3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
4. 4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. 5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
6. 6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. 7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. 8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
9. 9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
10. 10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. 11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
12. 12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

 
Ideas around the Gallup 12 include:

 

And lastly your own level of engagement

How you are feeling about work, the future, your workload and your family will impact on your own level of engagement, and the impact you have on your colleagues. Managing your own resilience and engagement can feel indulgent, and I want to be clear right now, looking after yourself is key for your leadership and your own health. If you are working from home move at regular intervals! Our heart rate slows down, and our energy levels slump when we are static, so take regular breaks and get up. In my next blog I will look more deeply at this topic, for now I want to say you are doing great, we are all in such unknown times and developing coping strategies are key to making it through. I am not here to encourage you to be a lockdown high achiever. There is an undercurrent to learn a new skill, to decorate the home, to plant vegetables and other self-development activities. I am more practical – if I make it out the other side with good relationships, some good memories and maybe a jigsaw completed this will be fine.

Some reflection questions:

 

References
www.engageforsuccess.org
https://www.gallup.com/home.aspx