6 Employee Engagement Power Points

Here are 6 employee engagement points to ponder.

Open the door. A true open-door policy in which anyone can drop by anytime is unrealistic. But you can establish a regular time when you are available for questions, discussion, issues. Announce, then publicize and re-publicize the Open Door Time until it takes hold in the minds of your employees. You may have only few takers the first few weeks, but in time and with your persistence, this will become a valuable communication time for and with your people. ~ Tim Wright

Engagement and strategy. Most of the leaders I meet believe the people they lead are aligned with strategy and engaged in their work. The data suggest otherwise. The Conference Board released research in January that concluded employee satisfaction and engagement in America were at the lowest point since it began surveying more than 20 years ago.  The report also concluded that the downward trend began long before the Great Recession. Another well-respected organization, the Corporate Executive Board, released research last year that concluded 75 percent of the employees were not engaged and giving their best efforts and of the 25 percent who were engaged, 60 percent were not aligned with organizational goals. The bottom line is that 90 percent of American employees are either not engaged or aligned with strategy. ~ Michael Lee Stallard

Alignment and culture. The truth of this statement lies in its simplicity. Employees don’t engage with widgets, deadlines or even people, necessarily. People engage with a sense of meaning, of purpose, of an understanding of fair play, of company values aligned with their personal values. The sum of all of this is your company culture. ~  Derek Irvine

Be consultative. Ultimately, adopting a consultative approach increases your value to clients, elevates the purpose of communications and makes initiatives more likely to succeed. How do you see yourself and your role? How are you evolving the way you work to become a counselor and trusted advisor? ~  Shook Yee Teh

Making sense of work. People work for many reasons. For some it is a drudgery that must be endured, for others it is purely economic, and for others work has a sense of meaning. When work is a setting and opportunity for employees to find meaning, their personal lives are more abundant, but they are also more productive. People can work harder and put in their time and go through the motions, but when they put in their energy and emotion, they are more likely to produce more. In addition, when employees create meaning, their customers will feel the same and their investors will be happier. Making meaning makes sense and cents. ~  Dan Schawbel interviewing Dave Ulrich

Employees first. What we want at HCL is passion. We want people to be burning up with desire to pursue their interests. Fascinated by their assignments. Jumping out of their skins with excitement about what’s next. Eagerly pursuing better solutions and new initiatives. We have found that the Employees First approach produces far more passion than any motivational or recognition program. Why? Because it proves that management understands the importance of the work being done by the employees in the value zone. It demonstrates that we are actively helping them in ways that make it easier for them to do their jobs. It shows that we trust them to do what needs to be done in the way they believe it should be done. And it shows that we respect them for the value they bring to the company. Vineet Nayar in Forbes

Click on name. Click on the names after each quotation to go directly to that author’s post.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals improve engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 2600 member Employee Engagement Network. David’s website offers you  1100 posts/articles on the engagement reaching  over 1,000,000 page views in the first 4 months of 2010.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

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

Employee Engagement and Vuvu-Zinger: Noise or Music?

Can you hear the music of the vuvuzela?

Here are some opinions on the vuvzela from Wikipedia:

Vuvuzelas have also been blamed for drowning the sound and atmosphere of football games. Commentators have described the sound as “annoying” and “satanic” and compared it with “a stampede of noisy elephants”,an elephant passing wind, ”a deafening swarm of locusts”, ”a goat on the way to slaughter”, ”a giant hive full of very angry bees”,and “a cow being given a surprise enema”.

It made me wonder if sometimes I am just blowing a lot of hot air and making noise in employee engagement. I hope not. I was inspired to watch this BBC piece on how to make music with the instrument. Watch this performance by Bryon Wallen:

Are you making music or noise?

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals improve engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 2600 member Employee Engagement Network. David’s website offers you  1100 posts/articles on the engagement reaching  over 1,000,000 page views in the first 4 months of 2010.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

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

Employee Engagement: Just Add Spinach

Let’s create more robust employee engagement!

This post originally appeared as a column in Employee Engagement Today.

Employee engagement is too damn anaemic to give us the full results we hope for individuals, organisations and other stakeholders from shareholders to customers. The anaemia of the phrase partially stems from attaching engagement exclusively to the word employee. This makes the concept too narrow in scope and too tightly defined to role. Robust engagement involves work engagement, student engagement, teacher engagement, project engagement, customer engagement, social media engagement, engaged management…

Are you engaged? When we get engaged to be married we are excited and looking forward to our time together. We feel passion and devotion and hope. We don’t have to complete a 12-question survey and wait six months to hear about how engaged we are with our spouse-to-be. We don’t need someone to run us through a training programme. We are engaged. Love, at times, may be blind but let’s not turn a blind eye to the passion and experience of engaged work. We don’t need to become blindly naive to our work but we should experience energy, desire and passion. Do you really believe launching an employee engagement approach with an anonymous survey will start passion flowing? Of course, don’t get me wrong, I am not looking for unbridled passion. We don’t have to bounce around like Tigger from Winnie-The-Pooh but we do need to direct our passion for work into contributions, building relationships and achieving results.

Many leaders suffer from employee engagement concept myopia. Upper management and leaders do not see themselves as employees and refer to employees as ‘them’. Them is us and whatever applies to the custodial and call centre staff applies to the CEO and president. Engagement is not something you do to people; engagement is our connection with people and with our work, regardless of our role or function within the organisation.

It seems that our workplaces present engagement as a problem to be solved. That is too anaemic. Yes, there are problems but I think ultimately engagement is much more about an experience to be lived ratherthan a narrow problem to be solved.

We don’t need to abandon employee engagement but we need to enrich it. Engagement is about achieving results that matter to all. Ensure that everyone benefits from engagement and ensure employees fully realise engagement is not a management term for ‘sucking out more discretionary effort’ from employees. Don’t house engagement within human resources or internal communication. It belongs throughout the organisation. Yes, you can have a champion and a coordinator but engagement is everybody’s business.

Employee engagement is much more than creating a happy dance YouTube video. I believe fun and playfulness can contribute to engagement but if that is how we demonstrate engagement it will never be sustained within the strategic direction and budgets of the organisation. Ensure managers realise that engagement is not an extra on top of far-too-many demands. Help managers and leaders realise engagement is how we manage and lead in this decade. We engage through co-created results, conversation, collaboration, community and high quality connections. Add strength to engagement. There are many pathways to strength identification. Ensure you go beyond identification to helping all employees know, live and leverage their strengths in the service of others, the organisation and themselves.

Ban anonymous engagement or disengagement. Engagement requires a name and a face not some anonymous survey. Chase consultants away who tell you they can’t tell you specifically who is engaged or who is disengaged. Engagement is about people – not pie charts or statistics. Engagement must be genuine and authentic. Be like Popeye who declared, “I yam what I yam what I yam”. Let people know who you are. Disengagement is a warning sign for both the employee and the organisation that conversations need to take place and work together to determine what changes need to occur to create more engagement for the benefit of all.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals improve engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 2600 member Employee Engagement Network. David’s website offers you  1100 posts/articles on the engagement reaching  over 1,000,000 page views in the first 4 months of 2010.

Connect with David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

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

37 Reasons Why You Should Join the Free Employee Engagement Network

Join the Employee Engagement Network Today.

Here are 37 reasons why you should join the free and freeing Employee Engagement Network:

1. It is free – costing you nothing and offering your everything related to employee engagement.
2. You will be more engaged if you engage with the network.
3. You don’t want to be left behind as we grow into the most powerful global force for employee engagement.
4. You can create your own page on the network for people to find you and let them know what you are doing.
5. You can read 2 fresh and funny employee engagement cartoons every week.
6. You can gather a diversity of ideas from the network to boost employee engagement for yourself and your organization.
7. You can learn engaging insights by watching over 150 videos related to the topic.
8. You will be part of a community that is already over 2600 members strong in under 2 and 1/2 years.
9. You can ask for help on employee engagement.
10. You can offer help on employee engagement.
11. You will learn countless ways and approaches to engage others in your workplace.
12. You can jump into the conversation in over 625 conversational forums.
13. You can start your own forum.
14. You can develop your social media knowledge and experiences.
15. You can literally see the faces of people around the world focused on employee engagement.
16. You can gather new insights by reading over 900 blogs on employee engagement.
17. You can make a valuable contribution to the field of employee engagement.
18. You can see what other members are doing with employee engagement.
19. You can download 4 informative free e-books composed by hundreds of our members.
20. You can scan the latest tweets on engagement
21. You can send tweets right from your own page.
22. You will receive a cogent weekly email alerting you to 3 activities you can engage in for just 3 minutes.
23. You can join a geographical group on employee engagement for your country or city.
24. You can find a consultant, writer, or speaker on engagement.
25. You can find HR professionals and others looking for consultants, speakers, coaches, etc.
26. You can get published in our next e-book.
27. You can announce an employee engagement event or conference.
28. You can find a job related to employee engagement.
29. You can read daily updates on the latest news in employee engagement
30. You can read great business book reviews.
31. You can search for a candidate for an employee engagement position in your company.
32. You can be part of a network that is transforming becoming a mobilized community to make a strong difference in employee engagement.
33. You can find contacts around the globe involved in employee engagement and arrange to met them when you go to their city or country.
34. You can invite friends and coworkers to join you on the network.
35. You can create or participate in a local in-person event. We have had local gatherings in San Francisco, London, and Chicago.
36. You can discover applications of the network beyond those listed here.
37. Don’t forget, you can do all this for free by joining the free and freeing employee engagement network.

Click here to join now.

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David Zinger, M.Ed., helps organizations and individuals improve engagement.  He is a writer, educator, speaker, and consultant who founded the 2600 member Employee Engagement Network. David’s website offers you 1100 posts/articles on the engagement reaching  over 1,000,000 page views in the first 4 months of 2010.

Contact David Zinger today to improve engagement where you work.

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