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Three Tips for Engaging Employees

by | Jun 22, 2018 | employee engagement, leadership, strategic communications

Everyone wants an engaged workforce.  Engaged employees are more productive and committed to the organization’s success.  Given that, why do so many organizations fall down in creating an engaged workforce and what can be done about it?

Having worked on employee engagement for some twenty years, it is clear that three areas of focus will produce the biggest gains in employee engagement.

  1. Employees crave leadership.  They want individual leaders and leadership teams who can create and articulate a clear vision for organizational success and outline a plan to achieve it. They want a leader who creates meaning, highlights and enrolls people in purpose, and helps employees see how their efforts contribute to the greater good.
  2. Communication is perhaps the one action that is easiest to do and delivers the biggest bang for the effort.  Help people know what’s going on a regular basis. A good rule of thumb: Be honest and communicate as openly and transparently as possible, especially around key processes such as promotions.  Create systems and roles that help you accomplish that.
  3. We all want to be recognized for a job well done.  However, how we want to be recognized differs widely amongst us.  Some want quiet recognition, others loud recognition in front of audience.  Whether quiet or public, recognition is most powerful when it is both specific and meaningful to the individual being recognized.  Too often recognition is done as a one-off event and is not designed to be sustainable.  Recognition is best when it is an integral part of the culture and “the way we work around here.”

As you look over your engagement results, consider these three areas of focus and develop a plan to “just do it,” as the Nike ads say.  Need assistance with this?  Contact OLA Consulting.

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