Employee Engagement Advice for Managers: Free E-Book
The ever-growing Employee Engagement network has come up with yet another free e-book containing simple advice for managers to boost employee engagement.
Employee-Engagement-Manager-Free-Ebook
I have quite a few pieces of ‘one-sentence’ advices in the book:
- Communicating “what” is not enough – explain the “why” behind everything.
- Remember that employees are human first; seek to build what matters the most to humans – personal relationships.
- When employees come to talk to you, do not carry the “I am very busy” look.
- Two ears, one mouth – listen more than you speak!
- Tell people why their roles matter to the organization. Teach them the “vital signs” of the business.
Designing Customer Experiences
These days I have been working with a client to help design their executive education center for their leadership cadre. They want to provide trainees a world-class learning experience, not only in terms of quality of education, but also hospitality. They don’t even call them “trainees”, but call them “customers”. So, it’s like they want to create the Ritz Carlton of executive education.
I am yet to fully immerse myself in the project, but am working with a simple construct in my mind. Many times, when companies are looking at customer experience programs, they end up automating processes & setting policies which definitely ease internal operations, but may not directly translate into positive experiences for customers. That’s internal focus. My simple thought is that the process has to be reversed, with focusing first on what the customer experience should look like, how would positive interactions / touch-points look like and then think about what systems / processes are needed to get to the desired state.
So, a fancy CRM will not do the trick for you, if it has not been designed & implemented with the customer in mind.
What Drives Employee Engagement?
I came across a blog post titled “Employee Engagement: What Exactly is it?” The post points to a study by The Conference Board which studied different research reports published by various consulting firms. Interesting thing is that they look at the top drivers of engagement and I have always maintained that there is a lot of value in attempting to identify the key drivers of engagement. The post concludes that these research studies generally agreed on the following drivers:
Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?
Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one’s level of engagement
Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?
Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?
The post acknowledges that there are lots of variances in the data, but concludes that across all variables “the relationship with one’s manager” is the strongest driver. I completely agree with the fact that the quality of direct supervisors plays a crucial role in shaping engagement. However, there are times when organizations need to focus differently. What happens when broad workplace systems / processes / policies are not in place? A manager can still soothe his people, but not for long. Discontent will brew fast with the organizational functioning. And, managers may be helpless.
Whether organizational functioning or workgroup experiences shape engagement really depends on the unique situation of the organization in question. I would rather not be so quick in putting all the onus on managers.
On another note, the Towers Perrin’s Global Workforce Study of over 90000 employees identified the following key drivers of talent attraction, retention and engagement. Interestingly, the drivers are different, indicating different solutions for different issues.
Read Up! (25th November)
It’s almost the end of November and I just can’t wait to hit the holiday season. But, before that, there are issues to work on, chapters to close and of course, Read Up!
So, here are a few things that I found to be very interesting:
- Want to increase your effectiveness at work? Check out the 3 mindsets that are going to support you in getting there.
- I stumbled on the “Who Needs Employees Anyway?” blog, which has some great data on engagement. Always a good read.
- If you are not doing it already, I recommend following Gurprriet Siingh’s blog. He always comes up with thought-provoking, insightful posts. Some of his recent ones are on Choices, Do Nothing and Engaging Today’s Employees.
- Are there any bright sides of the underutilized (but over-capable) employee you have in your team? Find out here.
Finally, I once again had a conversation on employee satisfaction vs. employee engagement. I could go on and on about it. But, out of impulse, I ran a Google Trends on these two terms. the graph below shows the search volume index for these two terms. At the bottom, you also see a mini chart on the “news reference” for these two terms.
What’s happening here?
Enhancing Approachability of Managers
Many a times, employees express that their supervisors are not so approachable and that they feel hesitant to go & talk to them on matters – critical or trivial. Employees may feel a sense of distance or alienation because of a number of reasons. And this effectively closes down an important channel of communication – a channel that is important to keep one’s ears close to the ground, to generate breakthroughs and ideas.
Here are some of simple things that managers could do to enhance their approachability:
- The First Minute: When an employee approaches you, make sure that you are forthcoming in the first 1 minute of every such interaction. Make sure that your people are made comfortable, so that they can accomplish what they came to you for.
- Listen: As simple as it gets – two ears, one mouth – so listen more than you speak! Don’t interrupt. Ask clarifying questions. Para-phrase what was said to signal your interest and understanding.
- Share: People don’t relate to a mystery. People don’t relate to robots. And, people don’t relate to machines. Reveal your personal side to your employees and see how they open up!
- Personalize: Try to forge common ground and connections by connecting with your employees at a personal level. How difficult is to put a few birthday reminders on your calendar? How difficult is to carry a conversation about a sport or hobby that a person enjoys? Find things to talk about that are not strictly related to work.
- Watch Your Non-Verbals: It’s importance cannot be over-emphasized. And, sadly, so many of us fall in this trap. Don’t have that “I’m busy” look when someone approaches you. Speak at the right pace. Relax. Nod when the other person is talking. Maintain eye contact. And, please don’t fiddle.
- Ask: Use the power of questions to your advantage. In meetings & interactions, don’t just focus on informational statements or conclusions – ask “what if” “what do you think” “what else can we do” etc. Encouraging feedback from employees will make them feel more comfortable in approaching you.
Approachability can potentially have a rub-off effect on a number of positive outcomes, including motivation and engagement. What else do you think we can do to make managers more approachable?
Free Employee Engagement Book
David Zinger has done it again with his Employee Engagement Network. He has been asking his network members – a bunch of people focused on employee engagement – to give a one-sentence advice on employee engagement. David has compiled 200 of these advices in a neat file for everyone to read and learn.
Head to this post to download the PDF. As David would say, it’s free and freeing!
I have two pieces of advice in the document:
- Treat your employees as you would like them to treat your customers.
- And, the other advice is not even a sentence, it’s a single, simple word – ACT!!
And the big take-out for me is that social media is powerful, engaging and demonstrates The Long Tail phenomenon so very well.
Happy Reading!
Building Accountability for Employee Engagement
Many a times, I find that HR folks rush too fast to make employee engagement metrics a part of KPIs or balanced scorecards. The idea is that there should be a “carrot” to ensure that managers take accountability for their people, otherwise they won’t spend time on open dialogue with their teams and co-create action plans for improvement in engagement levels. I was recently asked if the carrot and stick approach could be abandoned in favour of inculcation of engagement as a part of life in the organisation. Well, I think it is a difficult proposition for companies which are starting their engagement journeys. Inculcation of the engagement principles is a long journey of education for managers.
I had a chance to work with a company in the Middle East sometime back. Here is what they did over a 4-5 year period when it comes to building accountability for action planning:
- Since managers were not sensitive regarding employee engagement and had very transactional relationships with employees, the company set engagement targets linked with bonus payments. However, the engagement target was not merely an increase in scores year on year. This is not a great measure as it can lead to fudging of scores. So, this company looked at a few things: 4% weightage for increase in scores year on year, 4% weightage for exceeding industry benchmark, 4% weightage for exceeding national benchmark, 4% weightage for submitting action plans to HR dept. and 4% weightage for submitting a mid-year update on the action plan.
- Side by side, they wanted to gradually make engagement a part of their core principles, a part of their corporate lingo on a daily basis. The best bet was to get the leaders to drive this. The first task that was done was to prepare a solid business case demonstrating the business impact of engagement on measures like profitability, revenues, attrition etc. Once the leadership team was on-board, the leadership team decided that they will start any meeting, forum, town-hall, event etc. with the topic of engagement, before touching on business issues. This was because engagement is a business issue. Over a period of years, employees, even at the lower levels of the hierarchy, now have a basic idea about engagement and speak the language. And, the company is even mulling de-linking engagement targets from manager KPIs!
How is your organisation ensuring that the employee engagement initiative doesn’t lose steam? How are managers being made accountable? How is HR and the leadership team facilitating the change process?
