Today At Work – Episode 51

23 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource Zingers (No. 13)

23 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource to Improve Your Work and Your Life.

David Zinger offers you informative links and resources to enhance and improve your work and life engagement. This edition of 23 Eclectic Resource Zingers range from the top people to follow in Enterprise 2.0 to Chris Bailey on nuance and a wonderful drawing by Elizabeth Perry on snow and spring in 3 acts:

1. Employee Engagement. Top 10 People to Follow in the Enterprise 2.0 Space and Why (Pt 1). http://bit.ly/aItNqn
2. Chris Bailey on nuance is dead. http://bit.ly/di7C8O
3. Mobile app to increase employee engagement. http://bit.ly/c9xMQl
4. Judy McLeish: 4 Steps for a Manager in Charge of Employee Engagement. http://bit.ly/dcdmMm
5. Love them don’t lose them – employee engagement made simple by Cassandra Gaisford http://bit.ly/baK8PJ
6. Rosa Say: The value of worthwhile work. http://bit.ly/9rCTsR
7. Anecdote: Putting Stories to work. A rich website of resources for story and work. http://bit.ly/9jCvwJ
8. Concise employee engagement fact sheet. Well done. http://bit.ly/daR7uu
9. Great SOURCE OF INSIGHT. A blog to read all the time. http://bit.ly/9fbijm
10. Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness, Video. http://bit.ly/cqryBl
11. Psychologically Healthy Workplace Conference 2010: Building the Business Case for Employee Well-Being. http://bit.ly/9QRMed
12. TIM Milburn posted this great video from the band OK Go. http://bit.ly/cHYCsV
13. Steve DeMaio on Why Talented People Quit. http://bit.ly/cifCf2
14. Elizabeth Perry’s wonderful drawing on snow and spring in 3 acts. http://bit.ly/aDsRw1
15. Leo Babauta – 300 words towards being a positive person. Get the Zen habit. http://bit.ly/biyd1Z
16. Garr Reynold’s excellent presentation zen post on remebering from stories and experience. http://bit.ly/aCPEe4
17. Nilofer Merchant on Phil Gerbyshak’s blog Stop Playing Corporate Dodgeball…Yeah I’m Talking To You! http://bit.ly/9UcD2i
18. Valerie Zinger (my sister) great blog about Ottawa Real Estate and general real estate tips. http://bit.ly/9NgHyx
19. (Portfolio Careers) Barrie Hopson on Predictions for 2010: Five Changes in the Way We Work. http://bit.ly/axTbwy
20. Micheal Less Stallard teaches about U2’s Decision-Making Approach Contributes to Success. http://bit.ly/cbfTwF
21. Changing energy: How to turn employees from know-ers into actors by James Bennett at Melcrum. http://bit.ly/93oIt6
22. Noah Goldstein an excellent post on employee productivity in 5 easy minutes. http://bit.ly/cNYvMZ
23. Shawn Callahan post: Research shows that stories create personal motivation and increase productivity. http://bit.ly/dvpmqR

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2170 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Employee Engagement and Selfish Surveys: Open the Data!

Are you open?

Open your data. Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the Internet and very enthusiastic about open data. He made a plea on TED one year ago for open data and returned this year to show the results in just one year of making data more open.

Employee Engagement Data. It seems to me we are not very open about our data in employee engagement. Consulting companies often own the data for the companies they provide surveys for. Raw data is hard to come by. Employees sometimes never even see the results, let alone the data. It often seems to take forever for survey results to be communicated.

Data fear and improvement required. It seems to me that we fear being open about our data and sharing our data with the very people who create it. We can do better – we must do better – if we have an authentic desire to have our data move from a hoarded collection to a vehicle of authentic engagement.

3 Questions. Before you view the video ask yourself:

• Are we making our engagement data open?
• Are results shared with employees and the wider community?
• If we are not making data open, what is holding us back?

View the video and begin to see the changes and benefits that occur from open data:

Now, open your data.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2180 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

22 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource Zingers (No. 12)

22 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource to Improve Your Work and Your Life.

David Zinger offers you informative links and resources to enhance and improve your work and life engagement. This edition of 22 Eclectic Resource Zingers range from George Ambler on goal setting at Google and Dick Richards on commandments for peace of mind to Eric Klein on why it is important to be tumbled and Bob Sutton on too many star employees.

1. George Ambler on Goal setting at Google. http://bit.ly/9OgxFx
2. Pick Your Staples: Choices have Power in Medicine by Kathryn Britton http://bit.ly/d5NNvT
3. Dick Richards inspiration on 7 Commandments for Peace Of Mind. Succinct and Powerful. Read them. http://bit.ly/9lkCCD
4. Renegade HR: The brand is the talent with quick video from Tom Peters. http://bit.ly/dd5fRh
5. Lisa Haneberg. Do you talk beyond the point of contribution. http://bit.ly/b7bz1D
6. Indexed. Humor. Venn lawn darts and wine come together. http://bit.ly/9yCbt5
7. Data data everywhere but not a drop to read. Read best of flowing data from February. http://bit.ly/bY8CYp
8. Email: A Terrible Way to Manage Conflict by Cheri Baker http://bit.ly/9ZuyJy
9. Putting the “messiness” at the centre of the conversation by Phillip Bonser http://bit.ly/bEwC4z
10. Chris Bailey. Get some quality into your social media measurement. http://bit.ly/df4TrF
11. Vic McWaters on killing keynotes and one way speakers. http://bit.ly/abYmIA
12. Micheal Stelzner offers great tips on writing white papers. http://bit.ly/dcqLGZ
13. Leo from Zen Habits on the lost habit of resting one day a week. http://bit.ly/bx6DI7
14. Patti Digh offers a wonderful rant on how to write a book. http://bit.ly/cfFoXd
15. Eric Klein on why it is important to be tumbled. http://bit.ly/9936R9
16. Ed Batista Safety Trust Intimacy Pyramid. http://bit.ly/c16Vfw
17. New Math. Enterprise 2.0 Engagement. Collaboration’s Engine & Heart by Kevin Jones. http://bit.ly/9K4ODR
18. Bob Sutton. Employee engagement. You can have too many star employees! http://bit.ly/9uVbQQ
19. John Wooden a great coach. http://bit.ly/doBVp5
20. Rearranging Chairs as an Act of Leadership by cv harquail. http://bit.ly/bsgUX4
21. Steve Roesler on collaboration. Playing well with others. http://bit.ly/bPLbLH
22. Stew Friedman on Tweet or Meet? http://bit.ly/bsICyt

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2170 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Employee Engagement: Develop Your Front Line Supervisor

Obsess with First Line Supervisor Development for Employee Engagement

Tom Peters has a mini rant video clip here about creating satisfaction for employees and that 1 of your top 10 strategic focuses needs to be on hiring, training, and developing your front line supervisors.

Watch this 2 minute 38 second video and start practicing what Tom preaches:

If the video does not load in this window, click here.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2150 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Today At Work – Episode 50

Zinger Periodic Table of Employee Engagement Elements

Are you engaging the right elements to create results-based employee engagement?

If you would like to see how the elements fit together and learn more about what each element means, you can click on the image or click here. If you would like your organization to achieve the complete alchemy of employee engagement contact David Zinger for more information.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2170 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Strengths Based Employee Engagement (Daily Engagement)

Walden 2.0: A focus on daily employee engagement.

Daily employee engagement. This is a regular reporting of a one year project monitoring, measuring, and assessing daily employee engagement. You can see the  original project plan, intention, measures and tools by  clicking here.

This specific entry will not focus on the ongoing data collection, I will offer that in a future post. Today, I  will focus on strength-based approaches to work.

Know your strengths – be engaged. I have been keeping track of my daily engagement from the start of the year. One variable I measure is how much I live and leverage my strengths. I have used both StrengthsFinder 2.0 and the VIA Survey of Character Strengths instruments to determine strengths. I completed these instruments years ago but find that I am not getting maximum leverage from my own strengths. In addition I believe we don’t engage in strengths just for strengths sake — we apply our strengths to results.

Overcoming strength myopia. I wanted to enhance my personal strengths applied to results. To enhance this I created a personal diagram applying my personal top 5 strengths from StrengthsFinder 2.0 to results. It is a visual aid and an identified pathway to meaningful results and helps me overcome any strength myopia. There was a refocusing of strengths by taking time to draw the diagram and now when I think about my strengths, I visualize them better while also seeing them more directed towards meaningful results.

Personal strength based management/leadership. My personal pathway of Gallup strengths is to fuse (1) maximizing strengths with(2)  strategic approaches to results with a (3) positive orientation with (4) generating many ideas with (5) empathy for others — all fused together to give strength and engagement to hit the center of my results target.

Click on the sketch below to see a larger version of the diagram:

Your personal and daily strength based employee engagement.

• Do you know your strengths? (if not what is stopping you?)
• Do you use your strengths daily? (anything less than daily an anemic)
• Do you leverage them in the service of others and results? (strengths are for more than ourselves)
• Sketch out your strengths to derive more engagement benefit from a strength based approach to work.
• Start holding powerful and engaged strength based work discussions with co-workers.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2170 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

11 Questions for Employee Engagement based on Daniel Kahneman’s Work

Dual Selves – Stories and Experience – Employee Engagement – $60,000 Happiness

Background. Daniel Kahneman is a leading psychologists who created the field of behavioral economics. He is an expert on economics and irrational approaches to understanding ourselves and our world. Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.

Employee Engagement Questions. As you watch the video think about the implications of his views for employee engagement. For example:

• How much of engagement is experienced?
• How much of engagement is remembered?
• What is the implication for this in regards to survey data or real time engagement measures?
• What is the power of our engagement stories – the stories we tell ourselves about our experience at work?
• How well do we attend to changes, significant moments, and endings in our engagement with work?
• What is the role of time in engagement?
• Are we making work memorable?
• How engaged is the experiencing self?
• How engaged is the remembering self?
• How might the remembering self be skewing employee engagement survey results away from an understanding of the experiencing self?
• When are employees more engaged or merely thinking they are more engaged?

The $60,000 Flat Line. Ensure you watch the last 3 minutes of this video. Lack of money can contribute to misery in America but once an income of $60,000 is reached there is no more increase in happiness with income earned.

If the video fails to load in this window, click here.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2125 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com

Employee Engagement: 50 Companies to Admire and Imitate

Finding Engagement in a Hay Stack!

Employee Engagement Drives Loyalty and Business Performance at World’s Most Admired Companies

The Hay Group and FORTUNE magazine completed their 13th annual World’s Most Admired Company WMAC survey.  They have done a wonderful job of offering elaboration and insight into top companies and employee engagement.

Here area key conclusions from the study:

The study analyzed the connection between employee engagement and a company’s business development and consumer relationship.

Ninety-four percent of respondents from the WMAC believe employee engagement has created a competitive advantage in the market place, compared to 82 percent at peer companies.

Additionally, 71 percent of respondents from the WMAC believe their company has been successful at linking employee engagement to customer satisfaction, compared to 58 percent at peer companies.

“Employee engagement is increasingly being recognized as a major driver of business performance, revealing important information about an organization’s health and future prospects,” says Mark Royal, a Senior Consultant with Hay Group’s Insight Practice.

“Companies on the World’s Most Admired list are not only better at engaging employees in a way that reduces internal frustration and fosters loyalty, they are also better at sharing those metrics with influential groups outside the organization, and translating their success into new business and an enhanced customer experience.”

Additional Engaging Insights:

• 94% of WMAC say employee engagement efforts reduced employee turnover, and 85% say employee engagement efforts reduced employee performance problems vs. 67% and 72% at peer companies respectively.
• 90% of the WMAC identified their company as very effective or effective at fostering high levels of employee engagement vs. 71% of their peers
• 73% of the WMAC say their ease of recruiting talent to fill key positions is much greater/greater than two years ago vs. 57% at peer companies
• 69% of the WMAC say employee loyalty to the organization is much greater/greater than two years ago vs. 49% of peer companies
• 86% of the WMAC say line managers have a very high/high involvement as owners of the organization’s engagement initiatives vs. 76% at peer companies

Making the List. FORTUNE determines the industry groupings by using the Fortune 1000 listing and the Global 500 listing. Companies in the 27 international industries must have approximately $10 billion in revenue and rank among the 15 largest by revenue within their industry. Companies in the predominantly US oriented industries must have approximately $2.0 billion in revenue and rank among the 10 largest in their respective industry.

How these companies got so admired:

1. Ability to attract and retain talented people
2. Quality of management
3. Social responsibility to the community and the environment
4. Innovation
5. Quality of products or services
6. Wise use of corporate assets
7. Financial soundness
8. Long-term investment value
9. Effectiveness in doing business globally

The Top 50. Click on any of the names to go to FORTUNE’s profile of the company and why it was most admired (the first 25 state have a short section on why they were most admired companies):

. . .

Making Hay and a FORTUNE. To learn more about the Hay Study, click here or to read more about this work at  FORTUNE click here.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. He offers exceptional contributions on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2150 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.

Book David for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement today for 2010.

Email: dzinger@shaw.ca  Phone 204 254 2130  Website: www.davidzinger.com