Employee Engagement: Practical Steps to Take Now
This is Part 2 of “How to improve employee engagement”. In Part 1, we discussed “What is employee engagement” and how much it costs to not have an engaged workforce (more than you might imagine).
In this part, we introduce the first practical steps you should take to improve your team’s engagement.
While searching for a good definition of employee engagement, I came across a short and clear one that I had never heard of before.. This definition is very informal, but it accurately points you in the right direction:
Employee engagement is the opposite of burnout.
If you’ve ever experienced it or been close enough to a state of chronic emotional and physical exhaustion, you may remember the symptoms: low energy, inability to concentrate, fear of failure, frustration, and bitterness. In most cases, these symptoms are caused by unattainable goals, unclear criteria for success and vague responsibilities, lack of ability to make decisions and control one’s activities, and the absence of a meaningful Purpose.
Another hint that should help you internalize the problem: What type of organization has never had employee burnout?
You may know the answer, it has been known for decades. Peter Drucker gave it decades ago: volunteer organizations. Independently, Frederick Herzberg came up with another fundamental conclusion that should help you finalize the picture. He said: “Do not look for an answer to “How do I get them to do what I want?” Focus on “How to make them want to do what I want?” Indeed, the real key to motivating employees is to activate their internal drivers.
To make your team want what you want (assuming that you want what the company needs; however, that’s the responsibility of your manager), you need to eliminate the potential causes of burnout. This is the foundation on which you can grow a healthy and efficient organization that will encourage, promote and support high employee engagement.To make your team want what you want (assuming that you want what the company needs; however, that’s the responsibility of your manager), you need to eliminate the potential causes of burnout. This is the foundation on which you can grow a healthy and efficient organization that will encourage, promote and support high employee engagement.
1: Make sure your people have clear roles and responsibilities, and tangible, measurable, achievable goals.
Often, especially with the “agile” or “lean” fads, everyone is doing everything, and everyone is responsible for everything. That sounds exciting and democratic but is equivalent to no-one is responsible and nobody is completing anything. That could work for an early startup. However, if you are beyond that stage, this will never work and if left unattended, will drive the business into the ground.
You need to establish a system of communications, lateral and vertical, a Meaningful Meeting Matrix, so that the necessary information is shared and the progress is reported on clear KPIs.
Note: Meaningful Meetings, by themselves, are your first addition to the baseline. A client SMB used to have a three-hour-long weekly Senior Team meeting. Within the first three weeks of the improvement initiative, they slimmed it down to one hour weekly. More important: they were able to achieve this efficiency because now they could come to a meaningful result and agreement by the end of the hour, while previously they would finish their three-hour meeting frustrated and only because they all “had other commitments.”
(What’s the cost of 14 hours of top-management time saved per week? Share your guess in the comments.)
2: Move the decision-making as close as possible to the frontline workforce (in other words, eliminate micromanagement) and keep communication channels open.
If your team members have realistic and measurable goals, they will figure out how to achieve them. Just keep your door open and be ready to offer support if and when it is required. Plus, let them map and eventually optimize their processes. This will not happen overnight, but the exercise makes them talk, and agree on responsibilities, dependencies and handover points. Just that one agreement creates massive improvements.
3. With your team involved throughout the process, discover, analyze and document your company’s values and Purpose.
Yes, “discover”: you cannot impose your aspired values on your team; you have to find them out through meetings and one-on-one communications. This step should have been the #1 item. Realistically, your business is ongoing, and it will only make things worse if you tell your team what are their values. If you expect to take your team to the next level, you need to start a parallel discussion with them.
“But this touchy-feely stuff is not in our culture!” says my adamant client, an SMB owner and an “experienced leader.”
And rightly so: in most cases, embarking on a journey of increasing employee engagement is a culture change. Typically, it consists of creating, improving, and measuring throughout the process. We started from the “improving” step because in most cases you have a team in place already.
In Part 3: How o Measure Employee Engagement, we discuss how to benchmark your organizational culture and start monitoring the results.