based on survey responses to questions such as “I feel valued for the work I do.” My first task is to get them to realize it’s difficult to change anything based on feedback from just a single variable. It’s like trying to guess the shape of a golf ball by looking at a single dimple. You need to expand on that variable to develop a more robust understanding of what is needed. In this case, what does recognition mean to those answering this question? Who is providing (or not providing) recognition? How often is recognition provided? Does recognition vary over time? Does recognition vary with different circumstances? At the very least, you should create an expanded index of variables that all lead to better understanding what employee recognition means for your employees.
I’ve seen people (somewhat comically) try to interpret what a variable means without this broader understanding of the context (“I think what employees are saying by making this variable low is that … ”), but why guess on the meaning of the variables you are measuring when you can simply clarify by asking additional questions, conducting some employee focus groups or a pulse survey, or all of the above? The further you drift from the specific variables you are measuring, the more difficult impacting those variables will be.
Chapter 2
Strategies for an Engaged Workforce
In This Chapter
▶ Encouraging employees to take initiative
▶ Increasing employee autonomy
▶ Focusing on career growth and development
By being proactive, positive, focused, and forward-looking, managers can engage and inspire employees – and employees can inspire and engage themselves and their coworkers – in practical ways that yield real results and allow their companies to become stronger, more profitable, and more competitive in even the most difficult marketplace.
Taking control of their circumstances helps employees take control of their jobs – and their lives – and makes positive things happen. Companies that have had increasing engagement scores over the last decade have revealed a short list of key variables attributing to those results, and this chapter focuses on those variables. Here, I show you how to create a framework for managing employees in positive and practical ways to overcome negative times and circumstances. I offer a strategy, a process, and key factors critical to success for you, all supported with examples, techniques, and case studies of how other managers have succeeded in fostering more engaged employees.
All performance starts with clear goals and expectations. The starting point of any effort to improve or sustain employee engagement is giving employees a clear and compelling vision. If employees don’t know (or aren’t inspired by) what the organization is doing, they find summoning up the motivation to succeed more difficult. Frances Hesselbein, president of the Leader to Leader Institute, once put it this way: “No matter what business you’re in, everyone in the organization needs to know why.”
Assessing employees’ understanding of your organization’s mission and purpose
Ask employees what the mission and purpose of the organization is. If they don’t know, or if you get a different answer from each person you ask, chances are things have drifted or perhaps haven’t been clear for some time. Use this opportunity to revisit your purpose.
To gain clarity about the organization’s mission, management guru Peter Drucker suggests that you ask these five questions to get at the core of your business:
✔ What is our mission?
✔ Who is our customer?
✔ What does the customer value?
✔ What are our results?
✔ What is our plan?
Clarifying your vision (and revisiting this process periodically) is useful for deciding what’s most important for the organization to focus on to be successful. In addition, the result needs to be compelling enough to inspire everyone. “A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more,” says Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. From that vision, you can shape your unique competitive advantage, those aspects that you have to offer your customers that your competition does not. This advantage represents your strengths in the marketplace that you most need to capitalize on to be successful.
Modifying strategies to meet goals
After you clarify your vision for your group and start to revitalize your goals, you should analyze what’s currently working and what’s not working for the business. For example, established customers may be cutting back on using the services of your firm, but what new clients have recently started to invest with you? What do those new clients have in common, and how can you approach similar clients in the marketplace? Changing times call for changing strategies to meet your company’s goals. Engage employees’ help by seeking their input and ideas for improving business operations, saving money, or better serving your customers.
My spouse worked for a computer equipment and software company based in San Diego that saw its future orders drop significantly when customers no longer had the funds to purchase capital equipment. The firm laid off about 10 percent of its employees and froze salaries, but company leaders knew that these decisions offered only a short-term fix for a declining cash flow. Top management got together with the firm’s sales representatives and brainstormed what could be done to address the situation, as well as what the competition was doing in response to the situation. Here’s what they came up with:
✔ Changing the pricing model to include new options for payment that didn’t require the customer to make an expensive upfront purchase of equipment
✔ Offering a new, software-only solution that allowed customers to run needed applications on computers they already owned or on equipment they wanted to purchase from other vendors
✔ Financing the purchase of its customers’ equipment so that the customers didn’t have to initially tap into resources from their capital budgets
✔ Targeting new markets, such as the federal government (which had more available funds), which the company had never focused on before
All these changes required everyone in the organization to help think through implications for the business and make adjustments accordingly. The result was that the firm was able to get new clients who took them up on their new offerings. Overall, the approach helped the firm generate new sales revenue from new clients in a difficult financial time.
People want to know more than just the information necessary to do the work they’re assigned; they also want to know what their coworkers are doing and how the organization is doing. To keep your workforce engaged, communicate information to employees about the organization’s mission and purpose, its products and services, its strategies for success in the marketplace, and even what’s going on with the competition.
In my research, the highest-ranking variable that 95 percent of employees want most from their managers is direct, open, and honest communication. Also, the Families and Work Institute in New York did a study – the National