Helene Blowers offers this find slideshare presentation on engaged learning. View the slide show and determine how you can apply this knowledge to enhance or heighten your own engagement.
Employee Engagement: Cut it Out?
February 26, 2009 By 3 Comments
Here is a snippet from the Harvard Business Online February 26, 2009:
In response to the global credit crisis, many financial institutions are making drastic cuts.
- 90% are cutting discretionary spending;
- 78% are reducing travel and entertainment;
- 61% are putting capital projects on hold; and
- 59% are performing layoffs.
Will these cuts make a difference in the long term? A Corporate Executive Board study found that only 11% of companies were able to sustain cost reductions after three years.
When I read this, here are some of my employee engagement questions:
- How much does this cut into employee engagement?
- Can we expect discretionary effort when we cut discretionary spending?
- Do we expect our employees to go anywhere when we reduce travel?
- When we are laying off, should we expect those left behind to start laying off of work?
Un-Employee Engagement: We Need You
February 25, 2009 By 4 Comments
This was a comment I wrote to Rajesh Setty. it was a short note to people who were laid off. Although this is an employee engagement site I think engagement is so important regardless of our state of employment.
A short note to employees who have been laid off:
Be kind to yourself for life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be lived. You may not like the layoff (who would?) but can you live the layoff?
I think we get so busy trying to fix things that we don’t stop and take time to realize where we are.
Acceptance is not passivity and it is certainly not panic. Acceptance is so much stronger than simplistic positive thinking.
When life throws me a lemon, I don’t make lemonade, I duck. After that I get back up and figure out what comes next.
Alan Watts once wrote: “If we make where we are going more important than where we are, there may be no point in going.”
I encourage you to be fully where you are while creating your next moves out of acceptance not anger, hatred, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt or one of the other glitchy emotions that can accompany a layoff.
Please take care and carry on caring.
We need you — even if it does not feel like that to you right now.
Love David
Photo Credit: Give me some sunshine by http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/2245665263/
The Free Employee Engagement Network is now at 875 members
February 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The Employee Engagement Network
Our FREE network continues to grow and expand in both membership, content, and discussion.
Join us for free and engage in a wide variety of freeing discussion on employee engagement.
Engage 5 with Tim Wright
February 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Engage 5 is a weekly feature of Employee Engagement Zingers. Engage-5 asks leading thinkers, writers, consultants, and others involved in employee engagement to complete 5 sentences.
Read Tim Wright’s 5 sentences on engagement:
- I define employee engagement as the individual’s investment of energy, skill, ability, eagerness and desire in the work performed.
- A big challenge in employee engagement is management’s failure to see their primary role/responsibility is providing communication, opportunities and resources that stimulate engagement.
- A powerful way to create greater engagement is to expect (require?) every manager to develop and implement a specific communication plan that stimulates employee engagement.
- I am personally most engaged at work when I am finding specific applications and implementations for creative ideas.
- To learn more about engagement, I encourage people to make it a common, frequent topic of conversation, formal and informal, at work.
To learn more about Tim Wright and to learn more from Tim Wright about employee engagement visit him at: http://culturetoengage.com
Are You Wise to Employee Engagement? (TED Video)
February 20, 2009 By 3 Comments
Be careful of employee engagement rules or using incentives to foster employee engagement.
Learn more about employee engagement from this wise presentation from Barry Schwartz on how we stopped being wise. He offers wisdom as an approach that not only engages the person doing the work but engages our caring and others. He advocates that we re-moralize work.
Barry offers engaging stories and anecdotes to illustrate a wise approach to work and life, such as these three custodians:
- Mike who focuses more on the patient than the task.
- Charlene who focuses more on a family than vacuuming.
- Luke who focuses more on emotion than having to repeat an already done task.
Barry tells us about the dangers of a rules approach to work and cautions us about trying to follow rules of engagement or trying to foster engagement through incentives. Incentives may be counterproductive to the very employee employee engagement we seek.
I appreciated this TED talk about human interactions embracing kindness, care, and empathy even though the worker’s job description does not articulate this human or humane approach. We may be wise to ignore job duties in the pursuit of better work.
A wise person knows how to serve people, not manipulate people, and a wise person also knows how to improvise rather than only doing what the rules or job description tells the person to do.
Strive towards becoming an ordinary employee engagement hero. Engage through wisdom.
Employee Engagement – Career Improvisation
February 19, 2009 By 4 Comments
One form employee engagement can take, especially during these uncertain economic times, is career engagement.
I had the opportunity to write the following top career management tips in Bonnie Lowe’s e-book – Best Career Strategies of 2009.
The single most important career strategy of 2009 in my mind is non-strategy or improvisation.
Here are My 10 Non-Strategic Zingers:
- To embrace the spirit of improvisation.
- To realize you are never alone, we need others to improvise both a life and a career.
- To build on what you have and what you receive and give it freely to others.
- To focus your work on making others look good.
- To always put life before work as in life/work balance as opposed to work/life balance.
- To engage fully in, and enjoy, your career time.
- To leverage your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and organizational energy for career development.
- To go beyond one to two to three to four…to a full authentic network embracing mutual respect and mutual purpose.
- To know your strengths and ensure others know your strengths…be your brand and don’t be afraid to be brand new.
- To keep asking yourself: what comes next? (and if you don’t like the answer start improvising an alternative career path).
Click on the button below to get your own copy of Bonnie’s book with contribution from 28 different authors.
The One Ball: Play
February 18, 2009 By 2 Comments
Play Ball!
“PLAY BALL,” the umpire shouts to start the game. The umpire does not say let’s get down to work here, he says, “play ball.” Musicians play their instruments they don’t fret much unless they play the guitar. Young children spend the whole day engaged in various acts of playing.
Fumbling playfulness. Are you playing? Not on a diamond or in a rock band but playing ball at work each and every day? Are you leveraging play as a powerful source of employee engagement?
Playful engagement. Playing is a vital pathway to engaged performance. When we play we seldom realize how engrossed we are in what we are doing. Go ahead, ask some children who are learning so much through play what they are doing and chances are they will look at you like you are slightly daft and don’t realize, “we’re playing.” Yet while engrossed in play they are performing, relating, engaging, communicating, creating, and learning. These functions and benefits of play are effortless and children feel bothered when told it is time to stop playing.
Grow up. When did you stop playing? Do you feel that play is just a trivial activity for children — not something that belongs in the seriousness of work? As you got older did you also grow out of a childlike playfulness that made every day seem alive with vibrant activity and relationships?
WORKshop phobia. Is work playful for you? The mark of sanity is to blur the line between work and play. Yet so many of us have divorced work and play and view work as a drudgery to be engaged in only for instrumental reasons—getting paid. Or we take a FISHY workshop to learn to play. If you are enrolled in a WORK-shop to learn to play I think we have spotted the source of the problem.
Of course. Young children do not need to enroll in a course to learn to play and it sometimes seems when they enroll in school that play begins to dissipate out of their approach to living. Play can be invited, play can be initiated, play can be engaged in, but play is not something to impose upon others or to put too much conscious effort into achieving a playful state.
Strong play. Some of us our gifted with a playful strength. Play comes easy to us like water from a tap and we engage in play because it engages us. For us not to play is to risk disengagement and lowered happiness. My number one signature strength on the VIA Signature Strength Inventory is humor and playfulness. I personally risk disengaging when I don’t play everyday.
Entertain playfulness. Entertain playful notions. Don’t stifle yourself. Don’t learn to play or work at playing, just play.
We’re here to play. I was a counselor for almost 25 years. Many couples entered my office declaring they were there to work on their marriage. I saluted their determination and resolve and willingness to engage in rekindling their relationship but I often wondered what it would have been like to have a couple come in and say, “we’re here to play on our marriage.” Of course I always thought if that was the perspective they had, they probably never would end up seeing a marriage counselor.
Mindful play. It is not my intention to provide an instruction manual or a lengthy to-do list or send you off to Seattle to throw a mackerel around. It is my intention to remind you of play. You often played as a child and it did so much. I simply ask that you become more mindful of playfulness and allow it to seep into your work…perhaps if you can do this, even just for a few minutes everyday, work won’t feel so much like…what else can I say….work!
Here’s my pitch. I invite you to get a ball. If you can find an old classic rubber ball that I use to illustrate these posts, even better. Put it on your desk or near where you work. Every so often just pick it up and feel it, roll it, toss it, play catch with a peer, and remember the primal power of play as you play with the The One Ball.
Be the ball. Go ahead, have a ball at work and as you engage in your work let your work engage you so that you experience full engagement, not feeling separate from your work or your organization, as you become: The One Ball.
Engage-5 with Terrence Seamon
February 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Engage 5 is a weekly feature of Employee Engagement Zingers. Engage-5 asks leading thinkers, writers, consultants, and others involved in employee engagement to complete 5 sentences.
Read Terrence Seamon’s 5 sentences on engagement:
- I define employee engagement as a relationship where the commitment between an employee and the organization is high, mutual, and positive.
- A big challenge in employee engagement is maintaining engagement during difficult change.
- A powerful way to create greater engagement is to connect with people and collaborate on creating the future.
- I am personally most engaged at work when I am aligned with the goals and empowered to pursue them.
- To learn more about engagement, I encourage people to join the Employee Engagement Network on ning.
Learn more from Terrence at: http://learningvoyager.blogspot.com
Say YES! to Happiness
February 16, 2009 By 4 Comments
Say YES! to happiness.
YES! magazine had a succinct article on 10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy:
- Savor everyday moments
- Avoid comparisons
- Put money low on the list
- Have meaningful goals
- Take initiative at work
- Make friends, treasure family
- Smile even when you don’t feel like it
- Say thank you like you mean it
- Get out and exercise
- Give it away, give it away now
Click here to read the full article.
Employee Engagement Zingers: 500 Posts
February 15, 2009 By 2 Comments
500! (1000)
This is the 500th. post on Employee Engagement Zingers. I am still learning while also getting better at using this medium to communicate. I look forward to the next 500 posts being even better by being more informative, expressive, and valuable to you the reader.
Engage along with me, the best is yet to be.
Over 1000 posts. I just reviewed my history of blogging since 2004. I have now gone over 1000 blog posts on the various blogs I have written for ranging from this site to Slacker Manager and Joyful Jubilant Learning.
David Zinger
The World Unites to Engage Employees
February 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Here are just a few of the over 800 members in the Employee Engagement Network:
See who is here from: United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Canada, India, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, France, and Germany.
