The #1 Employee Engagement Mistake
I am continually surprised by how many organizations think that employee engagement has to do with extracurricular programs like company picnics, or internal perks like an on-site coffee bar or billiard table.
While there is nothing wrong with any of these things, it is a serious mistake to think that they deeply impact employee engagement, particularly if leadership is not practicing the basics every day.
A friendly supervisor at the company picnic who tells your family what a great worker you are cannot make up for poor input and inconsistent feedback about your work the rest of the time.
A manager cannot make up for his lack of availability to meet with you about an important project by challenging you to a friendly game of billiards. Why does he have time for that and not what’s most important to you?
Too often the perks offered to employees to promote employee engagement have the same effect as putting an ice pack on a broken leg. It might feel good momentarily but it’s not a long-term solution.
True employee engagement has to do with how you involve your team day-to-day in the work. Are they only given “marching orders” or are they able to have input into the parade route? Do you honor and tap their knowledge and experience or are they treated like novices? Are they given honest and useful feedback about their performance or do you disrespect them by telling them “good job” when it was, at best, mediocre?
Employee engagement has to do with attention:
- Attention to employees’ capabilities
- Attention to their performance
- Attention to how they need to be developed; and
- Attention to your own development needs in the areas of delegation, feedback and how to approach leadership in a more lighthearted manner
Short-term, quick fixes cannot increase employee engagement—at best it creates a voracious appetite for, “What have you done for me lately?”Providing your team instead with opportunities to truly get involved in the work is what they most want. Doing so fulfills the definition of engagement which, in this context, Merriam-Webster defines as: b: emotional involvement or commitment.
Employee Engagement Tips that Really Work
TIP #1 – Spend 80% of your time with your top performers and the rest of your time with the others
This works in two ways:
- Invigorates those who are performing well to do even more
- Demonstrates to the low performers that the way to get attention is through performance, not by making mistakes
TIP #2 – Treat employees like adults; don’t micro-manage
If your employee has been with you longer than 3 months and you still have to tell them step-by-step what to do or you have to continually follow up with them, there’s either a training issue on your end or a maturity problem on theirs. Either way, it is imperative that you take action unless you enjoy doing their job AND yours.
Tip #3 – Look for things to appreciate instead of things to criticize
Psychologists tell us that it takes seven positive statements to offset a negative one. When you look for things to appreciate about each team member, it goes a long way toward softening the critical feedback that is sometimes necessary.
Tip #4 – Say thank you at least weekly
I once had a supervisor say to me, “You mean, I have to acknowledge them just for doing their jobs?!?” The short answer to that is, “Yes.” The longer answer went this way: I asked him, “If every one of your team came in every day and just did their jobs, would your work be much easier?” He ruefully admitted it would so I said, “THAT’S why you want to acknowledge them for “just” doing their jobs.”
Tip #5 – Give them a much autonomy as possible
Author/lecturer Dan Pink tells us that, to motivate employees, give them autonomy over: Time | Technique | Task | Team
Tips are great and the five above are among the best but they’ll only work if you try them. Try one/week and see what happens!!!
Laugh to Build an Engaging Culture
Humor is no laughing matter. There are numerous compelling studies from such lofty organizations as Wharton, Stanford University and MIT that point to a variety of benefits to organizations that make humor a key component of their culture. These benefits include:
- Increased productivity
- Increased talent retention
- Improved customer care
- More employee engagement
- The ability to attract good talent – word gets out quickly if you’re a desirable place to work
- A decrease in the use of employee benefits – laughter decreases stress and increases health
- Increased growth – research done by the organization Great Place to Work shows, time and again, that organizations with a thriving workplace culture tend to grow significantly faster than peer organizations
So what are some ways to introduce humor into your culture? In my last blog, I mentioned posting funny signs in a central area every day. Here is another idea that will bowl you over when you see its impact on your culture:
Start a Company Laughter Club
Laughter Clubs trace their roots to India where, in the 1990’s people gathered at assigned times in public parks where they would look at each other and laugh for 5-10 minutes. Then they would leave and go about their days. Can you imagine what life would be like if you started your day with laughter?
And can you imagine the impact on your company culture if each department or division had 5-10 minute laughter sessions every day?
The key, of course, is to get executives involved. If there is no buy-in from a senior level, then employees will understandably wonder if participation will be looked down upon. After all, if the execs don’t think it’s important enough to engage in, what must they think of the employees who do? In case you need convincing to get you (yes, you!) and your senior level people involved, look at the bulleted list of benefits above. This is a SHORT list! If you want your senior people to do their best work, get them laughing!
For more information about laughter in the workplace, give me a call. The years I’ve spent doing stand-up can surely benefit your company.
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One Question; INCREDIBLE Impact on Employee Engagement
It seems Einstein was correct about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
If you are in a leadership position you’ve no doubt come to realize that inspiring others to improve is not dissimilar to Einstein’s experiments with perhaps one notable exception: we seem to continually do the same thing over and over resigned to achieving the same results.
I read an article* today about Employee Engagement wherein they told a story about one software sales executive who asked his employees every week, “How happy are you at work this week and how can we make things better?” He said he could predict the next week’s sales based on the feedback received.
If you’re not in management, how does this question apply to you?
- Ask yourself, “How happy are you at work and how can you make things better?”
- Query your immediate supervisor, “How happy are you with my work and how can I improve’?
- Ask co-workers, “Is there anything I can do that would help you with your work?”
Engagement is as much about listening as perhaps anything else. Listening begins with asking good questions. This question is among the best because it delivers a number of underlying messages:
- We care about your happiness.
- We want to know how we can make things better.
- It’s up to you to tell us what you need.
Roots of “insanity”
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. – Albert Einstein
Getting the same results over and over start with the questions we pose. Our brains are problem-solving mechanisms and designed to answer whatever questions are posed.
If you have people reporting to you and you continually wonder, “What is WRONG with these people? Why can’t they just do what I ask of them?” your mind will come up with multiple answers (none of them pleasant) to those questions. If instead you think, “I know they want to do good work. What can I do to help them get there?” your mind will come up with multiple answers that are significantly more hopeful and productive. If you then ask each team member, “How happy are you at work this week and how can we make things better?” you will have not only your mind working on finding solutions but also multiple minds and that can only result in solutions for improvement.
Experiment – try something new
“How happy are you at work this week and how can we make things better?”
Stop what you’re doing for a moment and consider what a difference this question might make in your organization.
Your team knows what they need and they have good ideas. Why not create an environment where they can share them with you and with each other to support a team goal of improving the work, the organization and the team’s satisfaction?
Your challenge: for the next three months carve out time every week to ask your team (or yourself) this question. Friday seems like a good day but that’s up to you. Watch what happens. Track what happens. See if there are tangible results in terms of productivity or accuracy. Look also for less measurable signs like employee morale and teamwork.
If you want to know what your team wants and needs to do their best work, try something new – ask them!
How to Turn Your Employees into Partners
Do all your employees understand what they have to do with your Mission?
I have often marveled at the endless hours and thousands of dollars an organization will spend on crafting a mission statement that even the CEO can’t recite from memory.
If you are an executive leader you should be able to recite the Mission Statement if woken up from a dead sleep and asked to do so. If you cannot, your organization is in deeper trouble than you can imagine.
Years ago I read Peak Performers, a book by Dr. Charles Garfield inspired by what he witnessed while working on the Apollo 11 mission to put a man on the moon. Garfield saw mediocre workers turn into extraordinary ones because the mission ignited them. He also saw them return to mediocrity when the mission was accomplished.
Intrigued, Garfield set about on his own 20-year mission: to discover what separates peak performers from everyone else. He found 6 unique characteristics. Today we will discuss the first:
THEY HAVE A MOTIVATING MISSION
What is your organization’s Mission? Don’t know? Look it up on the Internet. I’ll bet it’s there on your fancy website! Is that how your employees need to find it? Do they need to dig for it?
It is critical that every single one of your employees, you, and the Directors on your Board know the Mission Statement. Ideally, every meeting would start with a recitation of the Mission Statement. Every strategy and every project plan would clearly delineate how it helps to accomplish the Mission. Every company email would have the Mission Statement at the bottom. To quote master coach Tony Robbins, “Repetition is the mother of mastery.”
The Law of Attraction dictates that you get more of what you focus on. It is imperative that every team member is regularly focused on your Mission.
If you want more employee engagement, if you want your employees to partner with you the next step is for them to clearly identify and be able to articulate what role they play in achieving the Mission. Does the receptionist think he is only there to answer phones? Does the mailroom clerk think she’s only delivering mail? Or do they clearly understand, because it has been repeatedly reinforced, that without their contribution, the Mission could not be accomplished?
Although this would all work best if it were being modeled from the top down, it doesn’t need to be. If you are a manager or supervisor, you can begin this work in your own department. Start with your role and what it has to do with accomplishing the Mission. Then work with your team to identify the same for themselves. Then make the organization’s Mission central to your department’s culture. Make sure each team member understands that his or her contribution means something.
Countless hours and significant dollars were spent developing your company’s Mission Statement because it is important for every one on board to know what it is you are attempting to accomplish.
Remember the Apollo 11 Mission. Even if your company is not out to achieve something quite that exciting, what you do is important and when each team member fully understands his role in achieving it you will find Employee Engagement will increase.
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