Daily Engagement: Baseline Data and Goal Setting

Employee Engagement: The Walden 2.010 Project – Week 8.

Daily employee engagement. This is a weekly 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.

Week 8: Baseline Data and Goal Setting

Week 8. This was an average engaged week. I am now 8 weeks into the project. I will make a shift to moving from baseline data and mindful engagement monitoring to more specific goals and active interventions.

Once again teaching is the biggest engagement activity for investing and getting a return on energy. Click on the image below to have a better look at the numbers:

Assessment and Review. This project is keeping my engagement on track.

Conclusions and Recommendations. I will make two changes moving into the third month. I will report only every 2 to 4 weeks while continuing to do this on a daily basis. I will set specific measures to achieve by the end of week 12. This has been a good collection of baseline data.

Employee Engagement Overall Take-away. Gather good baseline data and be more intentional about engagement.

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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 2085 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership.

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 48

Employee Engagement Humor: Is Your Leadership Team Focused?

(Humor) Employee Engagement for Leaders.

Focused and engaged? How is your leadership team doing at setting direction as they strive for world domination. Do they have the drive to meaning? Enjoy this short Python video on the very big corporation leadership team meeting on domination and hat sales. Thanks to Johnnie Moore for posting this video.

If the video fails to load, click here.

Employee Engagement: The Zinger 2020 Vision

Predictions for employee engagement during  the next decade.

20/20 Vision? What do you see as the future of employee engagement over the next 10 years? How will this concept and approach to work change during this decade? It would be nice to have 20/20 vision but the future is  murky at best. It is a risky thing to try and predict the future but I will suggest a few of the changes I believe will occur in the next 10 years. Of course,  I am biased and these are predictions I want to see occur. I encourage you to write your predictions in the comment section at the end of this post.

Sociometers and wockets will trump surveys. Surveys are  too anemic to measure and communicate  engagement. Long surveys or once a year surveys will become the dinosaurs of engagement measurement. Yes measurement is important and necessary but doing a survey once a year just does not cut it. We will see real time micro surveys based on portable technology, GPS systems, etc. To get a glimpse of the future of human real time measurement see sociometers and wockets.

Data will become more open and more linked. It will become important for data to become more transparent and open. I expect organizations will be less guarded, especially with their own employees. Employees should be the owners of the data they offer and be partners in assessing the results. To get a glimpse of the future of data (including employee engagement data) see Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web,  TED talk on the next WEB – linked data. By the way, I love how at this site you can click on the interactive transcript, scan the transcript, click on any phrase and the video will play from that point on!

Engagement will move beyond a fad.  I expect engagement will vastly mature beyond happy dances in workplaces and Christmas party feel good exercises to specific behavioral actions that are of benefit to employees, organizations, and customers. We must always ask ourselves — engagement in what? Engagement in work, relationships, customer service, results, organization, etc? I believe the cynics would say employee engagement is a fad that will go away within a couple more years. I believe employee engagement is here to stay but will go through criticism, revision, refinement, and  change over the next 10 years. We are seeing the word engagement attached to social media, student engagement, and many other phenomenon.

Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business Software will accelerate engagement. The use of social media within organizations and porous to external social media outside organizations will present new opportunities and challenges. The first task for many organizations will be to fully engage staff in this media and then to ensure these tools are used to enhance both engagement and results. Internal social media must be an engagement gain for the organization not an engagement drain.

Engagement will become more real and authentic. Employee engagement needs to be more robust, real, authentic, and honest. Trust is a must or employee engagement will be a bust. We have ways to assess authenticity and people’s social intelligence allows them to  see through phony in about an 18th of second.

Engagement will detach from a narrow focus on the role of employee. Employee engagement will need to detach the engagement part of employee engagement to more specific engagement. We will need to be more specific with such terms as work engagement, organizational engagement, community engagement, project engagement, , etc. Employee engagement is too narrowly attached to a role and can easily create an us/them experience in organizations with managers/leaders seeing themselves removed from employees. My preferred term would be work engagement but I am open to see how this changes.

We will witness stronger independent research on employee engagement. This is vital and important. Hopefully Dilbert will not have just one cartoon lampooning engagement but Scott Adams will run a series over a week or two. Academics and universities can make great contributions to the field with their objective, scientific, and independent research. Consulting companies have too much of a vested interest in specific results to place our faith in their research. We need more controlled studies with experimental groups. Although employee engagement is not a fad there has been too much hype making it seem like a magic management panacea — rather than a key vital tool and approach to work. As a side note I would love to see best companies or employers not identified by consulting companies with vested interests in selling services to the companies they identify.

The search for the single holy grail definition of employee engagement will be abandoned in favor of stronger behavioral and operational definitions of the term. Let’s drop the hope or search for one single definition of employee engagement. The MacLeod report found over 50 different definitions of engagement. Many writers seem to hunger for a common definition. I am not sure how important this is, and there are benefits to diverse definitions in the early years of this approach to work. I think we need more operational definitions of engagement so we know specifically how people are defining it rather than all of us defining it in the same way. For example, what is the specific score and questions that determines if an employee is placed in an engaged or disengaged category? We don’t all need to agree but we do need to understand fully how the term is being used. We still have not agreed on a common definition of love and love has been around a  lot longer than employee engagement.

Engagement will be woven into the fabric of management and tapestry of leadership. This decade will witness both a broadening and a deepening of engagement. Engagement will become the new term used for management or leadership. Engagement and conversation will not be leadership or management skills they will be leadership and management. Engagement is the logical successor to command and control. Henry Mintzberg made an excellent case for lessening our focus on leadership and suggested we should focus on “communityship.”

Engagement levels will increase. People are focusing on it, organizations are measuring it, managers are addressing it, unions are assessing it, individuals are enacting it. This is not so much a prediction as it is my full intention and application to play a vital role in the increase of employee engagement worldwide for the benefit of all: employee, organization, managers/leaders (who are also employees), customers, and all other stakeholders who have a role in work including the families of employees.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be, let’s see not only where we end up in 10 years — let’s fully engage in our work to make it happen.

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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 2100 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership. David is also very involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor,  engagement approaches to 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

Daily Engagement: Engaged Strategic Improvisation

Employee Engagement: The Walden 2.010 Project (Week 7)

Daily employee engagement. This is a weekly 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.

Week 7: The engagement of improvisation

Week 7. I got back on track this week. I gave a large speech to 400 people on engagement and 2 speeches to groups of about 100 each. In addition there was a first session of Enterprise 2.0 consulting to enhance engagement. Click on the image below to have a better look at the numbers:

Assessment and Review. I was more engaged this week than last week.  My scores rose by at least 10% on each category and overall engagement for week improved to 84% from 69% the week before.

Conclusions and Recommendations. Once again I was struck by the type of work having such a strong influence on engagement. I love giving speeches with heavy doses of improvisation on my part and interaction on the part of the participants. The consulting work was also very engaging especially when we produced some immediate results. Newness and novelty are very engaging and may be an important variable in our work to engage others…can we keep the work new or novel or find ways for their improvisation into their work?

Employee Engagement Overall Take-away.

1. Find ways to increase improvisation for people who like newness or novelty in their work.
2. Look to help employees see quick results for their efforts.
3. Embrace impermanence and realize that engagement is in constant flux and change.

Leverage the power of strategic improvisation to boost engagement.

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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 2085 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership.

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 47

Can I Drive? The Problem with Employee Engagement Drivers

A Zinger Employee Engagement rant.

Don’t drive me and don’t put me on the bus!

It has become commonplace to talk about drivers of employee engagement. Abhishek on Mumbler wrote a nice summary on What Drives Employee Engagement.

Here is  the common  list from the Conference  Board’s work:

1. Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
2. Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
3. Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?
4. Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
5. Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
6. Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one’s level of engagement
7. Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?
8. Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?

I think it is helpful to have a number of factors to examine to determine how organizations can foster and enhance employee engagement.

Here is my mini rant: Don’t call them drivers!

The meaning of a driver is:

• the operator of a motor vehicle
• someone who drives animals that pull a vehicle
• a golfer who hits the golf ball with a driver
• a golf club (a wood) with a near vertical face that is used for hitting long shots from the tee
• one who drives something, in any sense of the verb to drive;
• driving – having the power of driving or impelling; “a driving personal ambition”; “the driving force was his innate enthusiasm”; “an impulsive force”
• driving – the act of controlling and steering the movement of a vehicle or animal
• driving – acting with vigor; “responsibility turned the spoiled playboy into a driving young executive”

I don’t want to jump on the employee engagement bus.

I don’t want to be driven around my organization and my work.

I want to get behind the wheel and drive my own work.

Drivers make me think we are putting too much in the hands of the organization.

Perhaps we fuel the vehicle, help to navigate, etc. — but let the employee drive their own engagement.

Could it be that the very use of this term actually lower levels of engagement?

Humor: Information Overload – Employee Engagement

What was that again?

Xerox has created a witty 3 minute video on information overload. I enjoyed the message and the presentation of the message, well done Xerox. We cannot sustain employee engagement when we experience too much information overload.

Watch and enjoy the humor:

Click here is the video fails to load in this window.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement expert. He offers exceptional education and consulting on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2055 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership.

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

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

Daily Employee Engagement Week 6: Continue Routine After Falling

The Walden 2.010 Project (Week 6)

Daily employee engagement. This is a weekly 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.

Week 6: Getting Back Up Again after Falling

Week 6. This week the recording and mindful monitoring of employee engagement derailed. I failed to keep track and sustain the discipline for each day.

Assessment and Review. Although numbers were not attached to 3 out of 5 days my engagement was moderate to good overall. It is not that this is an onerous task but it just got away from me.

Conclusions and Recommendations.  I will need to set more structure around the daily monitoring. For this week the very first task when starting my computer will be to go to the document and complete the daily survey.The Olympics are on in Canada and they have had some setbacks and many athletes will have challenges. The key is to learn and move forward. That is what I will do with this project….learn and move forward. I find that figure skaters offer a good model of this when they fall in their routine, get back to their feet, and finish their skating routine.

Employee Engagement Overall Take-away. There is a huge flux and flow in engagement. This week was okay for engagement but poor for project monitoring and mindfulness. We need to prepare people for times of low or fluctuating engagement so that they don’t get into a funk or fall trap to thinking more has been lost than it actually has.

When you engagement falls, how do you pick yourself back up

again and carry on with your routine.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement expert. He offers exceptional education and consulting on employee engagement for leaders, managers, and employees. David founded and moderates the 2025 member Employee Engagement Network. His website offers 1000 articles relating to employee engagement and strength based leadership.

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

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