How Managers Become Engaging People Leaders by Douglas Brown
Are your Employee Engaged? How Do they Feel About Their Work?
We recently saw some interesting but disappointing statistics (see graphic below) about how engaged employees view their work and careers and their potential for positive contributions to the organization.
Do your managers understand the role they play in the engagement process? Are they committed to engagement? Have your managers been trained in engagement techniques and people skills? This information will enable leaders and managers to understand the key drivers that will help engage employees
Recommendations:
- Take time to discuss projects with employees. Where are their challenges? What are their roadblocks? What resources do they need? How can you help them?
- Are you encouraging employees? Are you finding examples of progress they have made and comment on it? Can you acknowledge their growth and suggest additional steps they can take to continue development?
- Have you recognized something positive they have done or accomplished recently? How do they like to be recognized? Formally? Informally? Can you offer appreciation for their efforts and extra time they put in on a company project or the extra time they stayed to help get a product out on time? Can you offer a comment about them in the company newsletter?
- Have you asked them about how they see their career developing? Have you inquired about what type of training would help them take a step in helping them meet their career aspirations?
- Do you help employees interact with one another? Do you encourage teamwork and collaboration? Do you find ways to celebrate achievements together so that everyone can feel special and part of the team?
- Do you take time to understand your employee’s needs? Are you aware of the personal challenges they face? Have you offered support and assistance? Have you treated them with respect and dignity? Are you emotionally responsive to their feelings and needs?
- Have you helped them find meaning in their work and explained how they fit into the bigger picture? Have you shown them how, where and why their contribution are important and how they have helped the company? Do they have a way to measure and track their own performance?
- Have you asked their opinions on department goals? Have you inquired how they feel the job could be done better? Do you encourage all employees to speak up and seek out their thoughts on company projects and matters that affect their work and take their suggestion and ideas into consideration and explain why or why not they can’t be implemented?
- How can you support them to provide quality in their work? Do you foster open communication so that expectations are understood and acted on? Do you allow employees to see their colleagues at work and interact and collaborate with them in order to understand issues and challenges and work collectively towards improvements?
- What are your employee’s unique motivators? Engagement drivers? Challenges, frustrations and roadblocks that if taken away would allow the employee to perform at a higher level? What type of work and responsibilities do they like? Ae the seeking new challenges? Wanting to get involved with clients more?? Do you understand what enables them to perform at their very best? Do they want more autonomy? Flexibility?
- Do they have all of the resources they need to do their job properly? Do they have authority to make changes where they see potential for improvements? If they don’t have what they need do they know where to go, who to speak with and how to get it?
- Are they clear on what is expected of them and when? Have department goals and individual objectives been fully explained and understood? Are the timelines clear? Are they in agreement timelines and workloads can be met? Have you discussed with them any changes or how expectations might be better met or accomplished?
See the research statistics below (by Russ Faulkner) that relate to the points above.
These are a few key approaches every manager and leader can take to help build engaged and high performing employees. Help your managers understand the importance of their roles in the engagement process!
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