Engagement Driver 4: Opportunity

A culture of constant learning and development opportunities is created where people feel positive about their future career prospects

Engagement is increased when people have a positive expectation about their career opportunities within a business. In most organisations fewer than half of their people have a positive perception around their progressive career opportunities, whereas in best practice businesses, around 70 per cent of employees are hopeful about their future prospects within the business.

What if you don't train people - and they stay?
Focus on enhancing employees' strengths more than trying to improve weaknesses. Help your people identify their core skills (strengths) and work with them to continually develop and nurture them, then watch engagement increase.

Get clarity on what people want. Consider using a career development tool to fast track the process. Ask your people what opportunities and challenges they seek. Brainstorm job enriching ideas, even discuss openings with other managers to match any opportunities.

Where possible, recruit from within to reinforce the culture of opportunity and progress. Then make sure you tell everyone possible about it.

Grow or perish
Developing your people should be a never-ending educational and collaborative cycle. There are always innovations, new technologies and smarter ways of doing things popping up in our increasingly busy business worlds, so we need to keep our people ahead of the game, or find that:

• People are not being challenged and become stale and disengaged, or
• Our business stagnates because its employees are not invigorated by new knowledge and skills

Do your people feel:

• Optimistic and hopeful about their future career opportunities?
• A real effort is made to promote people by merit from within the organization?
• They have had at least one training opportunity to learn and grow in the last 12 months?

Do you really know why your people leave?

The key thing to be aware of is that, there are rarely talent shortages in great workplaces. It is the case that organisations short on talent usually deserve to be!"

There are many reasons why people leave, but almost all issues fall into these seven key areas:

1. POOR LEADERSHIP
Management that doesn't keep employees informed or show them appreciation and where there is a lack of respect, trust and integrity.

2. LACK OF PURPOSE
The organisation lacks a meaningful purpose that makes a real difference and isn't aligned with the values of the individual employee.

3. POOR REWARDS
There are no clear links between employee performance and business outcomes. The employee doesn't feel fairly rewarded for their contributions to the organisation's success.

4. LACK OF OPPORTUNITY
There are very few development opportunities and people have limited career advancement prospects.

5. POOR RELATIONSHIPS
Poor, negative and non-collaborative relationships exist between leaders, co-workers and within teams. Individuals don't feel like they have a community of friends at work.

6. POOR JOB FULFILLMENT
The nature of the day-to-day work is consistently unfulfilling and boring to employees and typically lacks challenge and the utilisation of their key strengths.

7. POOR WORK LIFE BALANCE
The business environment doesn't support a life outside work for employees.