Happiness, Retention, Productivity, Satisfaction, Loyalty… Are any of these synonyms for employee engagement? No, not quite.
According to the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), employee engagement “relates to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organization”. Additionally, Gallup defines employee engagement as “those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. At iAlign, we define engagement as a genuine, energized commitment to bringing their best self to work every day as measured by attitude and action.
True engagement is fairly challenging to come by. Gallup has found that only 15% of employees worldwide and a third of U.S. employees are engaged at work.
• Look out for indicators of low engagement: absenteeism, blame spewing, high turnover, poor attendance at work social events. Identifying disengagement is the first step.
• Connect with your people experts. Communicate to your HR team that developing a culture of engagement is not all on their shoulders, it is an organization-wide responsibility, and that you are interested in their perspective. Talk to your HR team about what real, effective remedies they have in mind about increasing engagement (hint, it’s probably not another pizza party). What resources and collaboration from others will they need to move forward?
• Seek continuous alignment between your organization’s stated values and the decisions made by organizational leaders. Keep missing the mark with alignment? Consider revisiting your values.
• Utilize active listening to get to know your employees’ strengths, struggles, and goals
• Frequently recognize and celebrate your people (birthdays, promotions, life accomplishments, newcomers etc.) AND their work successes.
• Be a leader your people can trust through modeling respect, integrity, and connection at work
• Enhance role clarity for your employees through clear, collaborative conversations about expectations
• Continuously develop your leadership and coaching skills
• Resist the urge to overuse pulse surveys. If you don’t plan to act on it, don’t send out a survey about it. When you do obtain info, act on it quickly and visibility.
• Advocate to leadership for meeting employees needs using business-outcomes justifications (see pg. 39 of Gallup’s Reengineering Performance Management report for useful statistics on the benefits of an engaged workforce)
• Develop engaging onboarding to set the stage for their experiences to come
• Reinvigorate monotonous position descriptions/roles with enrichment and development opportunities
• If you have the privilege of multiple opportunities during the job search process, consider long term potential for enthusiasm and purpose in your decision
• Invest in your own self-discovery
• Seek opportunities to utilize and leverage your strengths
• Communicate bravely: Initiate conversations with your manager about your development and goals
Patience and persistence. Engagement is multifaceted. It will take time and effort to impact. While prior research has identified many possible solutions, their relative impact will differ organization to organization, team to team. So, be prepared to experiment, seek feedback, and adjust course. Even small changes are valuable changes, because engaged employees have ripple effects on those around them. Hang in there!
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