Wikipedia defines an “engaged employee” as \u201can employee who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests.\u201d\u00a0 According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt that engaged employees will be less likely to leave an organization. That being said, the US Conference Board\u2019s 2012 research indicated that fewer than half of U.S. workers are satisfied with their jobs.\u00a0 Clearly these \u201cdissatisfied employees\u201d are not engaged employees.<\/p>\n
The Gallup Management Journal<\/em> publishes a semi-annual Employment Engagement Index. The most recent U.S. results are startling and indicate that:<\/p>\n Ways to Engage Employees<\/strong><\/p>\n So how can we get our employees involved?\u00a0 There are various ways to make this happen.\u00a0 Here are some real-life examples of ways some of our clients have successfully engaged their employees.<\/p>\n Engagement through Teamwork<\/strong><\/p>\n One way is to take measures that motivate employees to work collaboratively rather than independently.\u00a0 I recently worked in Malaysia and one of the managers I worked with, Raj, shared a story about how his extreme approach to getting employees engaged by working as a team had worked successfully.<\/p>\n Raj\u2019s organization hires a lot of technical employees and there is usually a high level of turnover among them.\u00a0 Through his recruitment interviews over the years, Raj learned that, in most cases, technical skill employees preferred to work alone and independently and they didn\u2019t enjoy working collaboratively.\u00a0 Yet to be successful, Raj believed that his organization required employees to work collaboratively and in teams, to achieve the organization\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n So shortly after they started, Raj gave this group of technical employees a small project and told them to work as a team to complete it.\u00a0 Moreover, he warned that if any individual were to fail in delivering the project successfully that he would fire all of them.\u00a0 They were perplexed.\u00a0 Why would the performance of one affect them all?\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t fair.\u00a0 However, despite their objections, Raj enforced his rule and told them that he knew they could figure out how to get this project managed and implemented over the next month.<\/p>\n After a month passed and the project completed, it was time for Raj to review their performance.\u00a0 Although they didn\u2019t all succeed, he told them that he had decided not to fire any of them.\u00a0 Of course, they were relieved.\u00a0 He then gave them another project with the same parameters; they all had to succeed.\u00a0 If any one of them didn\u2019t, he\u2019d fire them all.\u00a0 Eventually this group of four technical, independent-minded employees learned how to work collaboratively; supporting and assisting each other whenever required.\u00a0 It\u2019s now been 5 years and they are working more effectively as a team than independently, supporting and helping each other more than any other group in the organization.<\/p>\n Some of you reading read this story may discredit it, believing that this can\u2019t be\u2014employees need parameters and any threat of discharge will probably backfire.\u00a0 So I give you this quote to consider from Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and author of the book, \u201c2012 Thinking, Fast and Slow.\u201d He says, \u201cThe confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct.\u201d<\/p>\n Engagement through Project Management<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a story about a new product launch that was in a complete crisis.\u00a0 The project was months over schedule and millions of dollars over budget.\u00a0 If it failed, there could be very serious consequences to the organization.<\/p>\n Business Improvement Architects<\/a> was called in to audit the project and then help the organization to implement our recommendations.\u00a0 Of the many areas we uncovered that had led to this organization\u2019s project management crisis, one of the major issues was a complete lack of employee engagement.\u00a0 Most departments worked independently including: engineering, product design, sales, manufacturing, IT and marketing.\u00a0 Furthermore, prior efforts to get them to work co-operatively had failed.\u00a0 Moreover, the employees didn\u2019t even work effectively in their own departments; so it\u2019s no wonder that they couldn\u2019t work collaboratively between departments.<\/p>\n Because we were being asked to help this client with the implementation of our recommendations, the product had to launch on time or there would be serious consequences to the organization.\u00a0 To get this achieved, we focussed on employee engagement.\u00a0 We worked with the key program management team and their extended team members as a team to plan our approach.<\/p>\n The first objective was to set in place agreement as to:<\/p>\n We followed this with time spent, as a team, to re-define the program scope and create the detailed program plan.<\/p>\n Engagement though Process Management<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a story about an organization that operated with many departments, each working in individual silos.\u00a0 They would discuss issues, concerns and challenges with each other only when required.\u00a0 Resolution of these issues was always a long, laborious process. This siloed approach to work was ingrained in their culture.\u00a0 Most employees said they continued to work there for the money but if something else came along, they\u2019d be out of there.<\/p>\n When our company was brought in to help them \u201cimprove processes\u201d we quickly identified how their current culture had constrained their ability to realize operational effectiveness and how it was negatively impacting both their internal and external customers.<\/p>\n It has now been 6 months since our work with this customer.\u00a0 Our most recent review with the organization was incredibly positive.\u00a0 Their employees are now feeling much more engaged and positive.\u00a0 The comments we are hearing from them are: \u201cWow\u201d, \u201cI can\u2019t believe that we are actually communicating so often\u201d and \u2018I really like working here now.\u201d<\/p>\n Engage your Employees<\/strong><\/p>\n Practitioners and academics have argued that an engaged workforce can create competitive advantage. They say that it\u2019s imperative for leaders to identify the level of engagement in their organization and to implement strategies that will facilitate it.<\/p>\n In our experience there are many ways to engage your employees. While it is the unique elements of the work experience that tend to influence engagement, all begin with a conscious effort to encourage collaboration and team work.<\/p>\n Employee engagement creates a powerful, positive force for change.\u00a0 It helps to break down silos.\u00a0 It leads to increased operational effectiveness and fosters an environment where innovations are more likely to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Employee engagement creates a powerful, positive force for change.\u00a0 It helps break down departmental silos.\u00a0 It leads to increased operational effectiveness and fosters an environment where innovations are more likely to happen. There are many benefits for organizations to have engaged employees: reduced turnover; which is a significant cost to organizations, enhanced commitment to business… How to Get your Employees Engaged<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[1000,999,165,1001],"class_list":["post-2109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organization","tag-employee-engagement","tag-process-management","tag-project-management","tag-teamwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions\/2112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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![\"engagement_1\"](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/engagement_1-300x224.jpg\")
This process of engagement was new to them.\u00a0 Previously they had applied the traditional approach of having the program manager create the scope document and plan and then share it with the key resources on the project.\u00a0 However, the traditional approach had led to a lack of commitment on the part of the resources that were critical to the program\u2019s success.\u00a0 This lack of engagement in creating these documents collaboratively had resulted in individual resources doing what they thought <\/em>was required of them but not reporting when their work got completed.\u00a0 Working independently led to problems with project communication because other resources were not made aware when they could begin their portion of the work.\u00a0 As a result of the employee engagement now occurring on a continuous basis, they will successfully launch this important project this month.<\/p>\n![\"engagement_2\"](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/engagement_2-300x224.jpg\")
As part of our solution, we created cross-functional teams to help: detail their key business processes, analyse them and identify who was responsible for each segment of these processes.\u00a0 We then took the teams through an analysis process of identifying the root causes of problems that were preventing them from realizing operational and customer effectiveness.\u00a0 We followed this with a plan for how to implement the recommendation they had generated to overcome the root causes of problems.<\/p>\n