Employee engagement cannot work effectively when it is an organizational imposition.

 I strongly encourage you to read the article: Employee Engagement  from the blog,  Yearning Mice on Fire: Random Ravings From the Midnight Hours.

Here are some of Dee’s words:

Employee engagement. It is the latest and greatest corporate buzz phrase, at least for the corporation I work for. But what does it mean?

If you ask the company it is a quotient based on what an employee says about the corporation, their strivings to do for the company, and whether the employees are staying with the company over the long-term or not. If you ask the employee, especially the ones who have been deemed “not engaged”, it is the level of abuse you are willing to put up with for the salary and benefits you receive.

Just like the abusive parent who sits at the table with the liquor and smokes while moaning that their children just don’t love them, the corporation’s board of directors spends a great deal of time wondering where it all went wrong. Surveys are done and staff meetings are called to go over the results. The presenter always says the same thing, “We just don’t know why you’re not engaged.” Anyone who tries to explain it to them is quickly shut up and shuffled out the door.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I am “not engaged” at work. It’s hard to care about the corporation when the corporation has made it clear that they don’t care about you. Programs put into place to benefit the employee are used instead to control and manipulate them. Incentives are used to create tension and discord between employees. The contract is interpreted and re-interpreted constantly until very few of us are even sure what the words mean anymore. Information in place to be used by all employees is instead withheld and/ or requests for information are instead funnelled to your manager who berates and threatens you. Pride in a job well done has been twisted to mean that we must give 150% effort in 50% of the time and for 30% of the costs.

I encourage you to read the full post by Dee and determine how you would respond to her if you were a leader in the organization she talked about.

By the way, I believe this is much more than just one person’s perspective on employee engagement – I believe that many employees feel this way.

David Zinger specializes in employee engagement.

Email David at dzinger@shaw.ca

Fall has begun. Are you prepared to fall into your strengths?

On the Strength Based Leadership blog David will be writing about his 5 key strengths from StrengthsFinder 2.0. If you are committed to strength development I encourage you to purchase the book, take the inventory on-line, and prepare to join David for the next 5 weeks of his strength analysis as a model for your own strength analysis.

The series will start the first week of October.

Are you focused on your strengths?

• Can you list them?
• Are you living them?
• Do you leverage them in the service of others?

I believe it is so easy to lose our strength focus as this focus blurs with the plethora of pulls on our time and energy.

I have been extra busy the past month, as I image you have been too. During that time I changed David Zinger.com into a more integrated web publishing platform. I am co-writing Slacker Manager with Phil Gerbyshak, a blog with about 8500 subscribers. Along with this I have advanced other initatives and formed new partnerships.

It is at times like this that we can benefit by drawing upon our strengths and bringing our strengths to each endeavour we undertake.

I enjoyed completing StrenghFinder 2.0 this spring. Click here to read a review of this book I wrote for another site in March.

I plan to outline my 5 strengths from StrenthsFinder 2.0 in the next 5 posts and I encourage you to reflect on your strengths and turn them into actions.

If you want to follow along, I encourage you to purchase StrenthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Complete the on-line strength inventory and work through the same process as me for your unique strength profile.

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #26

To achieve full levels of employee engagement, efforts must come from organizations, leaders, and employees. This issue of the Monday Morning Percolator will outline 7 actions organizations can take to foster higher levels of employee engagement.

1. Assess and remove any roadblocks or hurdles to employee engagement. Ask employees what could be removed or lessened to increase their level of engagement with the organization.
2. Create a culture where employee engagement is valued, discussed, shared, and lived. Employee engagement needs to be both recognized and appreciated.
3. Ensure that the top leaders within the organization are committed to employee engagement, engaged themselves, and they are willing and committed to investing organizational resources into the engagement initiatives.
4. Move beyond measuring employee engagement to taking action on those measures. Attend to your metrics but focus on your people.
5. Help employees see the benefit of employee engagement for themselves and their customers. Don’t let your engagement initiatives become organizational manipulations to merely squeeze out more productivity and discretionary effort from employees.
6. Study your highly engaged employees to determine the vital behaviors they perform that contribute to their high level of engagement. Once those behaviors are determined work at spreading those behaviors to other people within the organization. Strive to make employee engagement a viral phenomenon for the organization.
7. Educate leaders and managers within the organization on how to foster employee engagement and help leaders understand and leverage their key role in employee engagement efforts.

The next Monday Morning Percolator will be: How leaders can contribute to employee engagement.

Contact David Zinger to learn more about employee engagement.

Picture Credit: Chicago from Above by http://flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/409484853/

Employee Engagement

Here are the slides from David Zinger’s work with Derek Irvine and Andy Parsley for the Globoforce International Round Table on Employee Engagement. Click the link below to view the PowerPoint slides:

Employee Engagement Webinar PowerPoint Presentation

If you would like to view and listen to the entire webinar email David Zinger at dzinger@shaw.ca.

employee engagement

Patricia Digh writes one of my favorite blogs, 37 days. She is much more than a blogger, Patti is a natural teacher through her informative and inspiring blog posts. Her blog began with the question: What would you be doing today if you had only 37 days left to live? This was based on personal  experience in a close relationship.

I don’t think we can look at employee engagement as being divorced from all the other facets of our life (and death). Patti wrote a post on “be thankful for brick walls” about Randy Pausch and his last lecture. Randy Pausch is dying yet he is really living!

Click here for a link to a 4 minute video on Randy.

Visit Patti’s post if you would like to find out more about Randy or you would like to be inspired by a skillful, insightful, and authentic writer.

What would you be doing today if you had only 37 days left to live?

Picture credit: Track 37 by http://flickr.com/photos/mukluk/264106290/

David Zinger can be found at www.davidzinger.com

Do you step in when someone needs coaching? Take a moment to watch this video of Natalie Gilbert getting emotional and tangible coaching just when it is required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9QDqAsAKUI

Now that’s support!

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #25

There are a plethora of methods and approaches to fostering and enhancing employee engagement. Actions can be launched by individuals, leaders, and organizations. When all 3 are working together we move beyond simple employee engagement to workplace engagement with engagement for all!

Yet, the workplace of today is asking more and more from everyone with less and less time to stop and determine what to do and how to do it. If we are given too many things to do we may give up or avoid them simply because we are overwhelmed and there are too many things to do already. It can be a challenge simply to remember to focus on employee engagement.

I recommend a 2 x 2 x 2 design structure:

1. What are 2 actions organizations can take to enhance employee engagement?
2. What are 2 actions leaders can take to enhance employee engagement?
3. What are 2 actions individuals can take to enhance employee engagement?

When everyone is taking action and working together we move beyond employee engagement to workplace engagement with engagement for all. You also get the multiplier effect as 2 x 2 x 2 = 8. The multiplier effect from a systems perspective means: changes in one field of human activity (subsystem) sometimes act to promote changes in other fields (subsystems) and in turn act on the original subsystem itself. This becomes full workplace engagement when we are seeing actions from leaders, employees, and the organization.

In the next 3 Monday Morning Percolators I will outline the actions of each of these groups. In the interim I encourage you to think about what are the 2 most powerful actions you can perform to create high levels of engagement.

Picture Credit: 2 x 2 x 2 = fun by http://flickr.com/photos/bofh/30900799/

David Zinger will be joining Derek Irvine and Andy Parsley in Globoforce’s International Roundtable Webinar. This webinar will focus on employee engagement. Topics will range from differentiating employee engagement from employee satisfaction to why are engaged workforces so vital now. [Read more...]

Have your gathered your strengths over the summer?

Are you experiencing strength in your leadership as you move into September?

Regular posts will resume on this blog next week. In the interim here are 3 articles I wrote at other sites over the past few weeks:

1. 5 Keys to a Happy New Year
2. HQI: A Moment of Difference
3. Siberian Accountability: You can’t say that here