Employee engagement. Seems that every time I look at Twitter, LinkedIn, or any leadership site someone is talking about it.
Yet with all this chatter, up to 88% of employees and 80% of leaders reportedly still do not have passion for their work.
Below are 5 keys to employee engagement that, if implemented consistently, have proven results in building a culture of collaboration and engagement.
5 KEYS TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
1. Involve everyone
- Employees and leaders need to clearly understand the vision and see their role in it.
- Provide clearly stated, measurable outcomes and ensure employees understand why they are important.
- Allow employees who do the work every day to solve problems and create solutions for achieving outcomes.
- Recognize that everyone is necessary for success. Treat all workgroups, unions, and contractors as respected partners.
2. Create structures to support and sustain
- Establish work teams to address specific concerns and practice continuous improvement. Assist teams in their development through chartering, removing barriers, and communication protocols.
- Provide an online workspace for team collaboration and communication.
- Build a corporate structure that can commit the resources necessary for change, facilitate and support engagement, and mediate elevated concerns.
- Ensure there is a corporate commitment to the new way of working - using structured problem solving to improve the business, efficiency, quality and the work environment.
- Commit corporately that no one will suffer job loss as a direct result of team efforts to create a more efficient workplace.
- Stay the course. Understand that lasting change requires attention and there will be setbacks.
3. Prepare and equip leaders
- Different approaches require different leadership behaviors. Explain the new expectations and provide leaders with training in the skills needed to lead differently.
- Leaders must model courage and commitment and reinforce expectations throughout the organization.
- Reinforce and sustain behavioral change with on-going coaching and feedback.
- Pay attention to the middle – front line leaders are often overlooked in engagement efforts. Recognize their specific concerns and provide training, support, and encouragement.
4. Create competency
- It's not enough to tell employees that they are empowered to solve problems and make decisions – they will need to learn new skills.
- Provide just-in-time learning so employees can quickly put new behaviors into action.
- Develop internal "champions" to be trainers and supporters to maintain momentum. Identifying and embedding peers as 'experts' in the new process will accelerate the acceptance and implementation of new concepts.
- Involve employees in designing the training to ensure it is relevant to their work.
5. Share the story
- Celebrate and share successes throughout the process.
- Ask employees to identify and work on 'quick wins' then highlight them to generate excitement about the change.
- Educate employees about the business and metrics so they can evaluate their own progress.
- Provide on-going and honest communication about challenges. Remember, with your new approach employees are partners in running the business so communicate with them as such.
- Identify employees from all workgroups and train them to be active participants in creating messages that will resonate with their peers.
Discover how the FAA saved $17 million annually using the 5 keys for employee engagement.
Vicki Kelsey is a member of the consulting team at Overland Resource Group and President/CEO of VKAL, Inc. She can be reached at v.kelsey@orginc.com.
Read other posts from Vicki.
- Voices, Votes, and External Influence: Labor-Management History Repeats Itself
- The Interest-Based Leadership Checklist: A Crucial Tool for Effectively Guiding Difficult Conversations
- Equal and Different-Leaders Can Value Both Using Interest-Based Leadership
- A Tale of Two Leaders: How Interest-Based Leadership Affects Employee Engagement
