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Want to Enhance Employee Engagement? Ask Three Critical Questions
By Michelle Sterling
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2. Are Your Managers Trained for Engagement?
Teaching employees how to effectively manage and expand their energy capacity equips them not only with the ability meet their daily demands, but gives them tools for taking control of their own performance—essentially turning over a large portion of the responsibility for engagement from the organization and management team to the employee.
In my workshop “Communicating for Engagement,” I ask managers two questions: “What does employee engagement look like?” and “How do you personally model and support engagement?” It never fails that the responses include references to drinking the company Kool-aid, going with the flow, not questioning senior management, and even just showing up for work every day. The Gallup Organization’s research clearly lists which manager behaviors enhance workplace perceptions. These are the same behaviors managers are held accountable for and evaluated on in most engagement surveys. However, very few managers can describe these behaviors and many can’t even define what engagement means. And even worse, their responses actually indicate they equate engagement with compliance, which research has repeatedly proven isn’t what drives high-performance.Add to this lack of understanding the use of ineffective communication practices, like cleaning out emails late on a Sunday night, essentially inundating employees with random information delivered out of context. Managers need some new guidelines for helping employees find and filter out the information they need to do their jobs, rather than adding to their information overload. This improved communication skill of proper timing, context and transparency is directly related to employees’ workplace perceptions, and their engagement.
3. Does Your Organization Have a Culture for Engagement?
In my work, I help organizations decipher their employee engagement results to identify learning opportunities. One client asked me to conduct focus groups to get to the bottom of a negative trend in engagement scores—in particular a decline in the attitudes about management, communication, and integrity. We agreed that the participant feedback would be anonymous to encourage candid responses…until I presented them with the feedback at which point they determined that rooting out and punishing the most outspoken employees would be a better tactic.
Now I know to ask questions up front like “What is your motivation for measuring employee engagement?” or “How do you use your engagement results?” Many times the answers to these questions tell me whether or not the culture is serious about engagement for its intended purpose: to create a workplace environment that facilitates top performance.
A New Decade for Engagement
As we move into a new decade of employee engagement surveys, as technological advances continue to accelerate the speed of change in the workplace and as demands on employees continue to increase, having an engaged workforce continues to be a key differentiator. Don’t be satisfied with average results. Help your employees better manage and expand their energy capacity. Train your managers to communicate for engagement and ensure that your corporate culture models the values you measure. MW
Michelle Sterling, CPLP, is a learning strategist and founder of VisActiva Learning. She helps organizations design, implement and evaluate business-relevant learning solutions. Contact: michelle@visactivalearning.com
