Employee Engagement Chronicle #7

David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Chronicle is your primary source for current news, views, reviews, and research on employee engagement. Each entry includes a link to an article or post with a short verbatim tidbit from the article. If you are intrigued, click on the author or source name at the start of each summary to study the full article.

The Chronicle beings with the key point for each of the sources listed:

Get The Point:

  • Emotional engagement and human bonding energize employees and catalyze productive energies.
  • Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work
  • Employee engagement is money in the bank
  • Have you heard the communication “secrets?”

Engage your employees to reduce attritionis from the Deccan Hearld. this article outlines a number of presentations related to HR and employee engagement. The following section outlining the points of Jyothi Menon really caught me eye: In a scathing indictment of the indifferent ways corporates function today in pursuit of their toplines and bottomlines growth and address the “deadly disease of attrition”, Standard Chartered Bank Vice President — HR Jyothi Menon, in her impassioned presentation on Emotional Engagement at the Workplace maintained that HR is no longer human resource but human relations. Pointing out that corporates, in their efforts to tackle attrition have not been able to connect with their employees, Ms Menon said, it was high time corporates did a reality check and emotionally engaged and bonded with their staff. “Only through emotional engagement and human bonding can organisations energise employees and catalyse their productive energies towards human excellence.”Well said Jyothi.

Engagement vs. Hierarchy – Well-Being in Chinese Workplaces  is in Positive Psychology New Daily. The article discuccses Gallup’s 4 elements of employee engagement – (1) Clarity of expectations and basic materials supported (2) Encourage employee contribution & fulfilment (3) Sense of belonging (4) Intellectual resources. Timothy So concludes the article: As Aristotle said, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” I wish my friend, as well as every employee, could leave his office with the biggest smile everyday after engaging in his work

Anne Moore Odell  wrote about Engaged Employees Equal Increased Earnings in Social Funds.This is yet another article looking at Towers Perrin engagement work. The difference between what companies need employees to do and what employees want to do has been named by Towers Perrin the “engagement gap.” Only one fifth (21%) of workers in the study are engaged in their work while 38% of polled workers are partly to fully disengaged. In one three year study of 40 global organizations, for example, we found that ‘high employee engagement’ companies enjoyed significantly better financial results on measures such as operating margin, net profit margin, revenue growth and earnings per share growth than ‘low employee engagement’ companies,” said Max Caldwell, Managing Principal of Towers Perrin.

Watson Wyatt Study Reveals Six Communication ‘Secrets’ of Top-Performing Employers. This article outlines the six communication secrets:

  1. Focusing managers and other employees on customer needs
  2. Engaging employees in running the business
  3. Helping managers communicate effectively
  4. Leveraging the talents of internal communicators to manage change effectively
  5. Measuring the impact of employee communication
  6. Branding the employee experience

Tim Gallwey: Are you game for engagement?

Tim Gallway writes wondeful books on performance and engagement in sports and work.

basketball-court.jpg 

In every human endeavor there are two arenas of engagement: the outer and the inner. The outer game is played on an external arena to overcome external obstacles to reach an external goal. The inner game takes place within the mind of the player and is played against such obstacles as fear, self-doubt, lapses in focus, and limiting concepts or assumptions. The inner game is played to overcome the self-imposed obstacles that prevent an individual or team from accessing their full potential.   Tim Gallway

Photo Credit: basketball court by http://flickr.com/photos/mioi/68561164/

Employee Engagement Toppling Over

Research has shown that there are three particular factors that put people under increased risk from stress:

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  1. lack of control over the job;

  2. quantitative or qualitative job overload or under-load;

  3. lack of support from managers and colleagues.

What can you do to enhance control, balance load, and buttress support?

Photo Credit: 4-3-2-1 by http://flickr.com/photos/bytepusher/166457814/

Employee Engagement Chronicle #6

David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Chronicle is your primary source for current news, views, reviews, and research on employee engagement. Each entry includes a link to an article or post with a short verbatim tidbit from the article. If you are intrigued, click on the author or source name at the start of each summary to study the full article.

The Chronicle beings with the key point for each of the sources listed:

Get The Point:

  • Target your most valuable employee with your engagement efforts.
  • High levels of employee engagement means higher levels of financial results
  • Are you sick or sick from disengagement?
  • The moment of truth has arrived in employee engagement. [Read more...]

10 Leadership Strength Application Methods – MMP #36

Strength Based Leadership and Employee Engagement – Monday Morning Percolator #36

Enf of the road

During the previous 5 weeks I engaged in leadership strength development through the application of StrengthsFinder 2.0. I encourage you to read the past 5 Monday Morning Percolators to follow the development and progress of this project.

Here was the schedule of my strength focus:

  1. Maximizer (Week 1)
  2. Strategic (Week 2)
  3. Positivity (Week 3)
  4. Ideation (Week 4)
  5. Empathy (Week 5)

The process of working on strengths included:

  • Complete the StrengthsFinder 2.0 inventory.
  • Scan your top 5 strengths
  • Study your first strength
  • Outline strength based actions for the first week.
  • Implement your action plan
  • Review your progress
  • Repeat the the process with the next strength on your list.
  • Click here to download a one page PDF form to assist in your strength work.

Here are 10 leadership strength applications and methods I encourage you to apply based on the experience of the past 5 weeks:

  1. We must go beyond listing our strengths to living our strengths. Many people have completed strength assessments but what happens after the assessment? Do your strengths get lost in the shuffle of daily demands? [Read more...]