skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Humans are social creatures. A major reason people stay in an organisation is because of Engagement Driver 5: ‘Relationships', they have good, positive, open and collaborative relationships between leaders, co-workers, teams and even clients/customers. The stronger the relationship links the more people will be engaged.
It is up to the CEO and managers of the organisation to constantly create ways of strengthening the bonds between people.
It can be challenging. Everyone is increasingly busy, so the quick impersonal email can be easier than a face-to-face chat or phone call. Many people travel for work, are out on the road or work remotely so, again, connections and personal links can be increasingly challenging.
Friday drink - Out the door?
Let's face it, these days many people prefer to go home and spend more time with friends or family than stick around for the old traditional Friday drinks. But to have increased employee engagement, this is just the type of thing businesses need more of, having their people feel they have friends at work and are part of a ‘family'.
Enhancing relationships
- Look for fun, quick excuses to get people together like celebrating birthdays with an office cake
- Have informal manager/CEO lunches
- Open plan offices
- Personality profiling for your team to better understand strengths and differences e.g. Myers Briggs
- Team building days may sound like a cliché but, if done well, can work
- Social club organiser
- One day a year all support a charity
- Have a fun business newsletter
Like any good partnership, you need to keep working at it or it may risk withering up and dying. If people do not continue to receive your interest they might get the eye of someone else whose shows a real interest in them, become attracted by another offer and leave the company.
We are all increasingly busy. Managers become too busy and do not invest the time to constantly check in and get to know and appreciate people at all levels in the business. What sort of message does this send? Do you really care about the people you work with? Do you know what motivates them? Do you make enough time to get to know them outside their working life?
It's not what you know, it's who you know
Relationships make the world go around - as well as your organisation. If you have a good connection with people they will be more likely to:
- Collaborate and provide helpful resources (to increase productivity)
- Listen and want to help the organisation succeed (improved performance)
- Comfortably share with you feelings of disengagement which you may then be able to reverse (improve profitability)
Consider this:
- Do you create ways to get employees together at least four times a year and talk about things apart from work?
- Does almost everyone at work have a best friend here?
- Do you know what your people's top interests are outside work?
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?
We've heard it all before, "I left for a better opportunity". The research shows that more than any other single factor, people stay engaged because of opportunities to learn and be challenged. Organisations need to be opportunist and help create the right opportunities for the right people at the right time so that people are engaged enough to stay another month, another year or another five years.
Keep developing your people, or develop increased turnover, the choice is yours.
People have an innate desire to grow and develop. Almost everyone wants to enhance their strengths and take on new challenges to be the best they can be.
If employees are not being developed and growing then they are not being the best they can be. If they are not being the best they can be, then they are not being as happy as possible and therefore employee engagement can be hugely affected.
Consider this, 41 per cent of employees at organisations with poor training plan to leave within a year, versus 12 per cent of employees at companies with excellent training. (Source: American Society for Training & Development)
What sort of talent development plan do you have for yourself and others?
Growing your biggest asset
In many companies more money is spent on recruiting people than for on-going training and development. What is more important; new people or retaining and developing existing employees? One of the most effective engagement returns on investment is growing and developing your existing people.
Best Employers invest more financial resources and time into developing their people than other companies. Companies in the top quarter of training expenditure per employee per year average 24 per cent higher profit margins than companies that spend less per year. (Source: Susan J. Wells, HR Magazine)
Don't jump to conclusions about what your people want (that would better engage them) as you will probably come up with the wrong solutions. Understand that everyone is different and invest time in rewarding each person based on their personal interests and motivations. If you do not know what those are, it is your job as a business leader to find out. Crazy I know, but why not ask them? Then see how many of them you can fulfill. But be careful not to over promise.
What are the rewards and benefits that glue each unique individual to the business? Because everyone is different!
It might be:
- Health and fitness initiatives
- Cash bonuses and profit shares
- Professional and personal development
- Family friendly practices
- Gifts and non-cash bonuses
- Supported flexibility policies
- Inspirational leadership
- Responsibility and challenge
- Business brand status
- Environment and proximity to home
- Career progression opportunities
- Training and development programs
Maintain a passionate fire within your people, not under them.
Possible actions:
- Ask your people what would really motivate them as far as rewards and benefits
- Have managers interview their people every six months to review personal needs
- Make employee engagement a measurable performance indicator for managers
- One of the most powerful rewards is autonomy and choice, both in work and reward options
- If providing incentives, blend a mix of short-term and long-term rewards
- If you can't pay enough money, give something else
- Never forget the power of praise, recognition and appreciation
- Encourage staff to do their own personal cashflow to take more financial control
- Keep talking and understanding your people, the quest is endless
The New Spelling for Engagement is T.I.M.E
Leaders become too busy and do not invest the time to constantly coach, get to know, review, appreciate and assist their employees, both in work and life. What sort of message does this send to your people?
Invest and make time for your people.
Do you really know what motivates your people? Do employees feel respected enough if you do not make enough time to get to know them? Managers at Best Employers are more generous with their time.
Posts
