The difference in a child’s excitement and wonderment is even more evident at holiday time. I recently had the pleasure of spending time with my extended family over the holidays, and it reminded me just how easily children get excited and engaged in something new – and how contagious that can be for all that are around them. When is the last time you experienced that level of excitement about something at work?
In some ways, as adults, we can tend to be less enthusiastic about getting involved in new things, perhaps as conditioned from past experience. This, in turn, impacts how we view opportunity and risk, and how comfortable we are in stepping out of our ‘comfort zones’. In my experience, this presents a danger of people getting ‘stuck in a rut’. In fact I read recently that as many 26% of employees in US businesses are reported as being ‘disengaged’, with a subset of that being reported as ‘actively’ disengaged. If that’s true, what are we missing in terms of organizational productivity? Imagine if you had 26% more resource available to accomplish your business objective….for free! You do, you just have to figure out how to tap into it.
Engaged employees perform better and stay longer, and this, in turn, leads to greater productivity and higher customer satisfaction levels. So, tackling employee disengagement can create a lot of positive energy. The problem is where do you start? It’s not easy to get people to feel passionate about their work or connected to their employer, especially in a virtual workforce (an increasing reality for many of us).
Numerous studies indicate that the number one driver of employee engagement – or disengagement as it may be– is our relationship with our immediate supervisor. So improving that relationship, and specifically teaching our first line leaders how to motivate and excite employees to encourage engagement, seems a logical place to start.
You can go further though…I have recently witnessed as an exciting new piece of work drove higher levels of engagement in my team. Just as importantly as the project, was the nature in which we decided to tackle it -- fast-paced and energetic, with everyone having an opportunity to pitch in using their strengths, regardless of formal role or assignment. It was as if team members ‘caught the bug’. Individuals that were disengaged became curious. Folks that were already engaged became even more so. Even people that were productive and working on other things, started to look at what they were doing by comparison and to make connections about how their products could be improved. It seems you can also boost employee engagement by ensuring that they have projects to work on that challenge and inspire them, and by ensuring that you engage them in it fully from the start.
Best of all, these things cost little and not only improve organization productivity, but also make for a happier work atmosphere as well.
So, as we start 2014 remember the path to greater engagement has to be ignited somewhere, and could easily begin with some small steps. Get your leaders ready, set yourself up for success, and look for opportunities to engage the wider organization more fully.
