It all starts with engaged employees:
Research findings continue to show in very clear terms that employee engagement is much more than just a workplace ‘wish list’ ingredient. This all important index of “bringing one’s best and most valuable self to work” is increasingly being understood to be indispensable for continuing organizational success. Indeed, employee engagement is now in the organizational priority list as a business imperative linked to several distinguishing performance outcomes. These include overall profitability, customer satisfaction and turnover.
Engagement makes the work place an unrivalled sacred ground for difference-making. Each committed player that enters gets the uncommon opportunity to create value and earn tradable points. Such team members also earn the prized privilege to be valued and rewarded at the premium level.
Given their enthusiasm, and thus their response-ability when it comes to solving business problems and serving customers, engaged employees make all the difference. The market loves and celebrates them because they create and lead accountable teams, make the bottom line attractive, and keep their organizations healthy. In a chicken and egg kind of way, healthy organizations in turn make the best fields of play for engaged employees.
Not surprising, engaged employees often earn the recognition and compensation to extend their happiness to the home front. All in all, happy campers are that much more energized to reach higher, outperform their peers and become even more valuable in their organizations and beyond. For employers and employees, this is the true color of win-win success, the story of value increase through values in action.
Many companies tend to conduct formal surveys as a way of auditing for employee engagement, but you don’t need this to figure out if your employees are engaged or not. The organization does need all eyes open – from supervisors and managers all the way to the executive floors. And no, engagement is not “HR’s job.” Rather than being one more thing to be blamed on HR, employee engagement is one of the top items in each leadership level’s job description. If you lead a team, you are your team’s CEO (Chief Engagement Officer), and that’s one responsibility that cannot be delegated away.
Signs of active engagement:
Are enough of your employees engaged or are too many disengaged? How to know? The popular saying here is that if you really have to look for it, it most probably isn’t there – at least not until you take action. The one danger that often goes with attempting to boilerplate employee engagement is one of completely missing the mark by focusing development resources on the wrong target. As with talent and talent management, engagement is one trait that is best observed in action (and promoted), rather than be pigeonholed in rigid definitions.
The good news is that if the organization is looking, engagement is a highly observable attribute. We all know that colleague who makes the customer very happy to be doing business with the organization. Who doesn’t remember that manager or executive who walks the floors often (with no blames to pass around) and keeps the teams motivated and energized even during the toughest business seasons? And we all know the jackass (do pardon my French) who makes us want to call in sick, don’t we? Each has significant impact on both the team’s emotional health and the business bottom-line.
Here are some of the signs to look for when considering what to recognize and replicated for employee engagement.
- Sparkle: Does this person work with visible passion and enthusiasm? Do you see strong signs of emotional, not just mental, connection to the mission?
- Attraction: Do co-workers feel the vibe? Just as negative employees can be toxic when it comes to the team’s emotional health, engaged employees can be infectious. Other purpose-driven employees are attracted to actively engaged employees like a magnet.
- Fun in the mix: Does the employee look up with a smile and occasionally have some fun? Do you get the feeling she’s loving what she is doing? Alternatively, are there clear signs he’s suffering through another day until ‘happy hour’ when he escapes from the captivity of the workplace?
- Beyond the numbers: Does the employee take talent to a new level where problems seem to dissolve without taking prisoners? Here, engagement requires more than just the skills to do the job well; it requires discretion and teamwork. It has been said that one can be a top performer without being engaged but one cannot be actively engaged without being a top performer. For employers, top performers who are not actively engaged kill collaboration while at the same time posing a serious flight risk. The consequent succession challenge here is best imagined.
- Esteem: Do co-workers respect this person? Whether he occupies the corner office or washes the windows, if John Doe is not actively earning his co-workers’ respect, real engagement is likely to be lacking. Respect that is not compelled by rank is easily one of the most compelling indexes of active engagement.
If a critical mass of team members (perhaps 30 percent or more) operates with the above signs, this is a good indication that the organization is headed in the right direction. If on the other hand it looks more like workers are taking up space and going through the motions, the organization is likely to be leaving money on the table. By and large, if the leadership cannot tell one way or the other, chances are that there is lack of engagement.