the
new mandate for turbulent times
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The need to engage employees to achieve the employee interaction and commitment required to drive your business success and compete in today's marketplace. That, in turn can go a long way toward building customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and company profits. The desire for employee engagement-essentially emotional connections between employees and their companies may not have been so important years ago but things have changed.
Every company has several groups that they need to keep happy.
This includes shareholders, employees, management, customers, suppliers, etc
Employee engagement has important implications for all of these groups as
well as the brand of the company. To ensure that you meet the commitments and
expectations of all groups you have to have employees who are engaged and
enthusiastic about their work, have the right training, the right tools and
information and the authority to take action.
Lets begin with a practical understanding of Employee
Engagement
Ø It's an
employee who interacts with the company, who brings new ideas about how to do
the work, who's willing to train or mentor and be an advocate for the company
and the people he or she works with without necessarily being asked
Ø Every
company looks for that 'something extra' that will motivate employees to invest
themselves in what the organization pursues. This 'engagement' of
employees is a combination of functional and emotional commitment - the
functional commitment to get things done and the emotional commitment to invest
'something extra' in the success of the efforts. The ultimate result of
engagement is a workplace committed to achieving real results that can be
measured in metrics of financial return, employee turnover and productivity.
Ø Engaged
employees are more productive and maintain better customer
relationships. It's critical therefore, for organizations to nurture and
engaged workforce. Selection and training of managers is a key component
to this, so organizations focused on engagement need to include manager
training on engagement in their talent-development
strategies."
Engagement now means much more than simple or traditional reward
and recognition programs. Now these activities have to be integrated with
leadership practices, communication initiatives, training, customizations of
needs and desires, etc, etc in order to be effective. It is more of
a holistic approach and strategizing on where engagement is heading
in your organization, what it means and how you are going to get there. It is
also critical that management is fully committed and supports the programs so
that everyone is on the same page. Where reward and
recognition programs play a role is to support the culture of
engagement. It is important to have a system in place that reinforces and
encourages the desired behaviors, attitudes and performance throughout the
organization.
Otherwise things just get out of control, and it is
very difficult to pin down what the company culture is.
While there are many approaches that can be used, here are some
essentials to improving organizational culture that are guaranteed to achieve
sustainable results.
#1 - Articulate what the vision, mission, and goals of your
organizations are. This should clarify what the organization is about; the legacy
it wants to leave; and how you plan to achieve service, performance, and
operational excellence. Keep them short and simple so that every employee,
top-down, can understand it. Also, don't be afraid to refine the organization's
vision, mission, and values every few years so it stays fresh, and always
relevant to your current work environment.
#2 - Educate your employees on the vision, mission, and goals of
the organization. Help them see how they fit into the big picture, what you expect
from them, and how their individual and team contributions will lead to
organizational success. This can be accomplished during the New Employee
On-Boarding process, at departmental meetings, at all-employee general sessions,
or one-on-one. Don't miss any opportunity to align employees, so that you feel
confident in holding them accountable for contributing to improving the
culture.
#3 - Hold leadership accountable for driving a culture of
excellence. Demonstration
and execution of the organization's vision, mission, and goals should be linked
to their job performance, incentive program, and future career advancement.
Look at it this way... if a leader is incapable of consistently driving
excellence, to some extent they are negligent in their job, and may be impeding
the organization's ability to improve the culture. Leaders are crucial in
improving organizational culture.
#4 - Reward and recognize employees who consistently exemplify the
qualities that will lead to organizational success. Once you have clarified what is needed to improve and drive a
culture of excellence, educate employees on what is expected of them and how to
deliver on the expectations; then its time to reward those who are uncompromising
in their commitment to excellence.
#5 - Coach, counsel, and develop employees who are deficient in
driving organizational culture. You do
this by first finding out "why" they are unable to meet organizational expectations. Is it a
commitment issue? Or is it a competence issue? If it is competence, they need
further training and development to help them connect the dots. If it is a
commitment issue, they need further one-on-one coaching to increase their
motivation and buy-in; they need to know "what's
in it for me?
#6 - Refine your new employee selection process. Going forward, make a commitment to only select and hire potential
job candidates who can help the organization positively advance, and enhance
the culture you are trying to create or improve. Integrate questions into the
interview process that will help you identify job candidates who will naturally
fit in with the culture you are trying to create, and definitely avoid those
who may erode or destroy it. Undeniably, this will require waiting for the
right hire, and not just filling a job opening with a warm body.
WHAT HR LEADERS ARE REALLY DOING ...
When the different approaches of these top performing
organisations are analyzed in detail, seven common practices emerge. Although
varying slightly from business to business in their application, as a template
for successfully and effectively planning for and measuring employee
engagement, they are invaluable to most organisations.
The seven practices are:
1. Hold your leaders accountable and responsible for both the
results of the survey and the action planning and implementation process.
2. Align actions emerging from the employee engagement survey with
the current activity of the business and existing strategies as much as
possible. Success comes from playing to and accentuating your strengths - not
from reinventing the wheel after every survey.
3. Focus on what matters. Analyse the information and prioritise
so that you only tackle a few things at once. Remember, success breeds success
- the more you put 'runs on the board' the more momentum you'll gather and the
more employees will engage actively with improving their own engagement. The
opposite of this is biting off more than you can chew and paralysis by
analysis. Neither looks good or adds any value to the business.
4. Design a comprehensive and disciplined 'Engagement Improvement
Process' (EIP) well BEFORE you conduct any sort of survey - and certainly well
before getting any results or information to act on. Such a process needn't be
complicated. Simply understand who is accountable and responsible for what,
have a plan in place to act on the information as it emerges (including booking
times in people's diaries well in advance), and ensure the relevant people have
all the skills they need to carry out their duties before they're called upon.
It's incredible to think that anyone would run their business any other way -
but many still behave re-actively during employee engagement surveying.
5. Measure frequently, in line with existing business performance
measurement cycles, and act promptly. Most companies spend a lot of money on
employee engagement surveys and then let the value diminish slowly over time.
Remember, engagement data is built on employee perceptions, which change
rapidly over time. Acting on data that is more than three months old is dubious
practice. Acting on data that is six months old could arguably be described as
pointless.
6. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Employee engagement
data is built on perceptions. These perceptions can be managed by clear, open,
honest and two way communication. Failure to communicate leaves 'space' for
employees to fill with their own communication. Manage the messages flowing
around your business, or the messages flowing around your business will manage
you.
The most critical message that must emerge from your engagement
survey is the connection of your post measurement action to the information
provided by employees in the survey. This is a matter of courtesy to thank
employees for their time and helps them to connect their contribution to the
ongoing improvement of the business. Once again, it is incredible to think that
any business wouldn't do this most simple of things, but many businesses fail
completely in this task.
7. Involve as many employees as possible in the action planning
and the implementation of these plans. When things happen 'around' people they
usually struggle to connect with them. In contrast, involving your employees in
the process will emotionally invest them in the required success, a practice
that will almost certainly guarantee better outcomes for all involved.
Experience shows that proper planning usually prevents poor
performance. Equally, failing to plan is almost always the equivalent of
planning to fail. Despite this, organisations all over the world continue to
'stumble through' their employee engagement surveys oblivious to the
opportunity cost such an approach has on their business.
With best compliments,
Dr Wilfred Monteiro
MUMBAI- INDIA
www.synergymanager.net
