The 10/19/07 post, What Happens when..., listed one of the key ways an organization increases their people's engagement as:
- The organization demonstrates awareness of the employee's value to the organization.
Why does the organization's visible awareness of the employee's value matter?
First, employees respond favorably to praise for doing good work. Workers are pleased to be commended for a job well done. The human ego appreciates strokes. As Sam Walton has said:
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.
Second, people are pleased that their work contributes to the organization's success and well-being. One makes an automatic connection between his work's value to the company and his personal value for performing the work.
Third, an employee enjoys knowing others recognize she is a contributor. If she knows management views her performance as part of that contribution, she feels valued for her contribution to the company's success and well-being. This naturally reinforces the "my work is important, I do my work, therefore I am important" mindset.
These three factors are not hard to understand. Nor is it hard to understand why an employee then more readily engages skills, abilities, and energies.
You've heard, I'm sure, of the now-famous 29% of employees who are actively engaged in what they do. (Cumulative statistics from Gallup's Q-12 Survey of the past 10-plus years.) They are the probably ones who begin their jobs with their engagement mindset already in place.
But, I suggest to you that
- Those 29% should not be ignored. Engagement Maintenance is a necessary consideration.
- The other 71% (allegedly, 55% "neutral" or not engaged and 16% "negative" or actively disengaged) do warrant attention.
- Potential ROI is lost by not making an engagement effort with those two groups.
Taking a look at the statement at the start of this posting, it's obvious that managers/management are responsible for communicating the organization's awareness (and appreciation) of individuals' and teams' value.
I know there are those who will say all the organization has to do is hire the employee. It is then up to him to get engaged, to stay engaged, and to be happy with his engagement. If the Gallup figures are accurate, then that must be true for about...29%.
Concerning the ROI loss mentioned above, Investment is the total personnel base. Consider the significant budget invested there. Return is the performance improvement that produces benefits to the organization: productivity, profitability, market share, customer loyalty, community recognition, employee recruitment and retention, and more. Employee engagement generates that performance improvement by the employees.
Management can leave engagement up to the employees and leave a lot of ROI untapped. Or managers can take on communications such as these:
- Speak "do" not "is." When speaking to an employee, introducing an employee, discussing an employee (in her presence or not), refer to what they do rather than their job title. The more you address the actions they perform, the more they know you focus on (and appreciate) their performance.
- Ask employees about their jobs: what they find exciting, difficult, rewarding, essential, superfluous. It is assumed you know their work and they know their work. Talking about it does not negate the assumption. It does show interest, concern, respect, and value for the work they do. Since you're talking to them about something you value and they do, it shows you value that they do it.
- Write articles for the company newsletter in which you interview and quote employees about their jobs. That you're willing to take the time to write the article, to publicize individuals for the work they perform, and to involve them in the composition of the article demonstrates respect with a capital R.
- Include as a regular company blog posting, newsletter article, or lunch brown bag meeting: "What I do for the company." Invite your people to provide their perspective of the work they perform in their own words. The more people you involve in this the more talking about (and valuing) "what we do" becomes part of the culture.
- Encourage teams' saluting other teams. Teams certainly provide you valued performance, as well as do individuals. Make the effort to discover and publicize effective interaction and coordination between and among different teams (units, departments) in your organization. Allow the teams to determine how they will salute one another. Publicize the salutations.
These are just a start. Your creativity is already thinking of variations on one or more of the above. That creativity is also generating completely novel ways you and other managers can demonstrate to employees the value they bring to your organization.
I encourage you to share such ideas in your response. (See Comments, below.)
Comments