Practical Ways to Address Employee Engagement

Trish — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:44:52 +0000

Last week, I was reading ‘Enough of the Platitudes- Answer the Rest of the Question’ by Paul Hebert. Paul has his own incentive and reward design consultancy, i2i, (shameless plug to check it out and hire Paul) and he maintains an active blog as well. In that particular post, Paul waxed philosophical on the fact that on several media platforms today, including Twitter, people are just throwing out grandiose ideas with no substance behind them as to how to answer the questions. He then provided results from a recent Twitter search on “employee engagement” and “SHRM10″ to demonstrate all the deep thoughts.

I decided to take on a couple of the tweets he posted and add some examples of substantive ways organizations could address the rest of the question:

Employee engagement is the holy Grail! Trust, pride in corporate symbol, opportunity/well being=3 main drivers

Ah, the mention of the Holy Grail reminds me of the Monty Python movie. Here’s an exchange from the movie that may actually fit with this theme.

King Arthur: “Well, who is your lord?”

Dennis’ Mother: “We don’t have a lord.”

King Arthur: “What?”

Dennis: “I told you, we’re an anarcho-syndicist commune. We take turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

Certainly rotating who is the acting executive officer for the week would be a creative way to increase employee engagement.

All kidding aside, an example of how to increase employee engagement is to build the trust, the pride in the mission (corporate symbol), and provide opportunities and well being of the employees. By asking staff level employees to step up and give input and take ownership of key areas that affect employee engagement you can actively work to change the culture. This is truly the only way to increase engagement long term. You have to have the buy-in of the staff. Instead of having HR “own” the employee engagement survey, form a committee of staff level employees that represent the various departments in your organization. Facilitate the committee but make sure that the employees are the ones driving how to increase employee engagement by sharing ideas, best practices, and determining the best way to communicate throughout the year.

Massive collaboration to initiate and integrate sustainability. Direct employee engagement at innovation rather than competition.

Now, these are two completely separate concepts that can act alone. But, when done in concert, I would imagine the results could be miraculous. One option would be to launch an organization-wide sustainability audit and then institute an internal task force to come up with ways to address the areas of highest vulnerability. This should include employees from staff through leadership levels. I would appoint someone in middle/ early management as the project lead with a leader as a mentor. This will provide skill development for the more inexperienced manager and also give credibility to the project so that the staff level will be more likely to speak up and participate.

For the innovation piece, tell the committee up front to “dream big”. Tell them to brainstorm solutions regardless of what they think they will cost, how many people will have to be involved, etc. In other words, tell them that you want them to be as creative as possible in their sustainability solutions. Then, as leadership, provide them with tools to aid in their innovation.

Al Gore at #SHRM10 “employee retention and engagement key to future of business.”

Ok, I was not present for Al Gore’s speech, however, if this is an accurate quote of what he said, I think he was on the right track but ultimately missed the boat. Why? Well, in my experience, employee retention is not the key to the future of business. Retaining the RIGHT employees is key. There is always a need to let low performers or employees who do not promote the corporate philosophy and mission go. We do not want to retain them in most cases. So, I would change his statement to be “Key employee retention and engagement leads to a stronger future for the business.” The challenge is actually retaining the key employees. Now, some will be motivated by money and others by challenge or opportunity. I’ll throw it back to Paul Hebert to address a real-life example of how to incent people to stay with the organization.

Cross departmental teamwork is critical to overall engagement.

This one will only work if you make it measurable. Set up cross-functional teams that actually align several department or several parts of departments. Focus on providing service as consultants would, even if the customer you are dealing with is internal. Set this new team up for success and instead of rewarding individual performance, reward the team when they accomplish specific milestones together. This may be a revenue target, number of new customers served, or whatever metric makes sense for that particular team and the work they are doing. The point is to help employees understand that they can accomplish more and feel greater fulfillment when working as a cross-functional team.

So, there are a few ways to get to the rest of the story. What do you think? Have examples of how you’re organization has done this? Share it in the comments.

Demolition Ahead- Blowing Up My Blog Roll

Trish — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:30:44 +0000

It seems that the blog roll may have seen better days. Before Twitter lists and FaceBook fan pages, I think the blog roll was much more important. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that I really do love all the blogs I have listed on mine. The only problem is that these lists become too long and I can’t possibly tell someone new to this medium why each blogger is so special to me by just throwing them each in a category.

So I came up with a solution.

I am going to blow up my blog roll.

Instead, every two weeks I am going to highlight 3- 5 blogs and tell you why I like them. Some may be blogs you already read and hopefully, some will be new to you. I want you as readers to understand why these writers inspire me, challenge me to think differently, and why they make a difference in my life. Then, I’m going to put these posts on a special tab so people can come back to them. So, there’s no better time than the present to tell you about a few I love.

Punk Rock HR

So, for me, I am starting with THE Queen of the HR blogs. Punk Rock HR is authored by Laurie Ruettimann. Laurie is brash, bold, stratight-forward, smart, and snarky. Oh, and did I mention cute? We’ll, lets just say she’s the total package. I’ve been reading her blog for years and she is the person that inspired me to write mine. Why should you read Punk Rock HR? She posts answers to some tough HR and business questions, she posts humor, and she rants and raves occasionally too. Another plus, if you write a comment to Laurie, she always responds. Even if she has 100 comments. You’re important to her.

Bottom line: A++ for her honesty and integrity.

Know HR

Frank Roche of iFactual has a blog I just do not ever skip reading. If he writes it, I’m reading it. What I like about Frank is that he doesn’t necessarily post like other bloggers. Some of his most inspiring posts may only be a sentence or two. He’s direct and when you read the wisdom of Frank, you have those “ah-ha” moments. Another plus is that Frank will use whatever means necessary to reach out to you. He writes, he uses video, pictures. All things to grab your attention and not let go of your brain all day. Of all the blogs I read, I keep more of his posts than anyone else’s. Bottom line: Smart guy, smart writing. Read it.

i2i- Incentive Intelligence

Paul Hebert makes me a better person. He makes me a smarter business professional. He makes me question what I know and what I don’t know. He makes me think about employee motivation and intelligence in a whole new way. He can do the same for you. Paul writes these incredibly smart posts that often make me pause before commenting. It’s because I want to live up to the thought he puts into his posts by giving equal thought to my response. I also recommend Paul’s blog because if you are in HR and only focus on pure HR blogs, you will miss quite a lot of great information. Bottom line: Challenge your brain and read Paul’s blog. You’ll be glad you did.

HR Ringleader » Paul Hebert

Practical Ways to Address Employee Engagement

Demolition Ahead- Blowing Up My Blog Roll

I am going to blow up my blog roll.