Employee Engagement with David Zinger

2. Maximize Performance (Part 2 of a 10 part series on how managers can improve employee engagement)

According to Aon Hewitt’s most recent report Trends in Global Employee Engagement, the largest drop in engagement this year is employees’ perception of how companies manage performance. Workers worldwide believe their employers have not provided the appropriate focus or level of management that would lead to increased productivity, nor have they connected individual performance to organizational goals.

Jamie Gruman and Alan Saks wrote an insightfull article on performance management and employee engagement in the Human Resource Management Review. They stated that less than a third of employees believe that their company’s performance management process assists them in improving performance.

Barbara Bowes, an excellent writer in Winnipeg on HR issues, stated in a Winnipeg Free Press column on Job performance appraisal system needs overhaul:

The result is that in many cases executives do not support performance appraisals and so the practice falls by the wayside. Human resource managers are dissatisfied because the performance systems are typically time consuming, bureaucratic, paper driven, top down and often have little reference to organizational goals. Not only that, operational managers are often chronically late in completing their appraisals. All in all, the performance management system is frequently the most poorly implemented of all human resource management systems.

What, then, should an effective performance management system look like? First of all, no matter the technical details of your performance system, the organizational philosophy must recognize that “on task behaviour” is not the only thing that should be counted. Organizations need to recognize that work has changed. It is more flexible, more dynamic, interchangeable, less precise, team oriented, more ambiguous, more complex and more stressful. These elements have been found to be just as important and need to be given consideration in a performance evaluation.

Changing landscape and mobility of work. Engaged performance management must recognize and respond to the flexible, dynamic, ambiguous, complex and stressful elements of performance. Add to the challenge is the increasing level of mobile workers, reaching over 1 billion this year. We want to maximize employees performance and not tick them off with the use of structured inauthentic performance appraisals that sucks the energy out of both employees and their managers.

Here are 6 practices to create engaged performance:

Make work worthy of attention. One sports psychologist defined performance as anything worthy of your attention. Hopefully all work is worthy of a worker’s attention. We need to step back from the jobs, roles, and tasks and ensure that work is worthy of the attention it deserves. Here are a few questions to consider:

• Have I done my best to make work worthy of every employee’s attention?
• Does each employee know the value and meaning of their work?
• Does the employee have some freedom in their attention and work that capitalizes on intrinsic interest and motivation?

Job craft with employees. Help employees job craft by fusing the needs of the organization with the strengths of the individual so that performance is beneficial to both. Knowledge workers need to have input into what their work is and how that work is achieved and job crafting can be an excellent step in that direction.  I encourage you to read a short review of job crafting by CV Harquail, How Job Crafting Can Get You Closer to Authentic Work. Here is a short section from her post:

Job crafting is the practice of (re-)shaping the job that you are expected to do so that you can enlarge the parts that are important to you.Through job crafting, an employee can take on new activities, new responsibilities, and new relationships, making the job so bigger (or smaller), more interesting, more useful, and overall more closely linked to their strengths and interests.

Fuse performance appraisal and engagement appraisal. Jamie Gruman and Alan Saks, in a rigorous academic piece on engagement and performance, advocate that we move from management of performance to facilitation of performance. They recommend that we fuse performance management and employee engagement into a new approach that weaves the two more closely together to respond to the way work is done in 2011.

Engage with mastery versus competency. It is astounding to see the lists of competencies required by many jobs and the lengthy guidebooks that outline those competencies. How can employees act on all those competencies or even remember the lists? We engage strongly with a sense of mastery versus competency and we need to parse long lists of competencies in favor of strong mastery on a  vital few performances that achieves results while fully engaging the employee.

Personal performance focus. Are you maximizing your own performance? Mike King on his Learn This website wrote an excellent blog post on 10 ways to be performance oriented. In the post he includes such ways as:

• study the results of everything you do
• reflect on your talents and how to use them
• kill distractions and find solitude
• change what doesn’t work quickly

Step up to variances with conversation. Step up to variance with safety and conversation. Learn to address variances in performance as soon as possible through conversations that demonstrate caring. I think both Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations offers a good foundation to build the conversation skills to achieve results, address gaps, and build realtionships.

Previous posts in the series:

• The Employee Engagement Pyramid
• 12 Keys to Achieve Results with Employee Engagement

Next post in this series: Navigate through setbacks, path progress, and enable work.

David Zinger built the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement to help managers bring the full power of employee engagement to their workplaces. If you would like to arrange to have this course or workshop for your organization or conference contact David today at 204 254 2130 or zingerdj@gmail.com.

The Employee Engagement Pyramid: Achieve Results

Fly into engagement. My last post was on  achieve results and the employee engagement pyramid. It is important for employees to fully understand and engage with results. It is also key for employees to see their results. I  just received and watched this short  video from Diana Dozier 15 minutes ago. It is a great demonstration of employees seeing results.

Are you showing your employees their results?

The video reminded me of the old slogan: GE brings good things to life.

Workshop/Presentation/Course

If you would like to arrange for a keynote or a workshop for your company, conference or organization on The Employee Engagement Pyramid and The 10 Things Managers Must Do to Increase Employee Engagement contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone 204 254 2130.

Here are the 10 things managers must do if they want to  increase employee engagement.

Achieve Results

Results. Engagement is more than a feeling, survey number, or a YouTube happy dance. We engage in actions directed towards results. The first key to consider when acting to increase employee  engagement is what results are you working to achieve and how can you involve all employees in formulating those results or achieving those results? Powerful results matter to managers, organizations, employees, and customers.

Path Progress

Progress.  The most overlooked source of engagement and motivation is to experience progress. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer has demonstrated that progress is the single biggest key to motivation and engagement for knowledge workers.  Learn how to structure work for progress and especially to guard against the demoralizing and disengaging experience of setbacks.

Maximize Performance

Performance. Performance is anything worthy of your attention. How do you make key performances worthy of employee’s attention and how do you offer feedback that is actually heard and acted upon by employees? We are witnessing the early stages of a significant fusion of performance management and employee engagement that may address some of the gaps we have experienced in attempting to have performance management do a better job of improving performance.

Foster Recognition

Recognition. Without recognition our workplaces are void of the human element. Are you fully letting  employees know that you see them, you are thinking of them and you both recognize and appreciate them. Authentic recognition is so much more than an annual gala or occasional gift card for good behavior. Recognition is social, strategic, and powerful. Recognition is the “re-thinking” of engagement in our everyday interactions and recognition for progress creates a strong multiplier for motivation and engagement.

Build Relationships

Relationships. We need to focus on the two “R’s” of engagement, results and relationships. How do our efforts achieve results while also building relationships?. Our brains are wired for the social element of work and in some ways all managers are becoming new versions of “social workers.” While our staff may have a locus of engagement on tasks we need to ensure that we have a strong locus of engagement on people.

Enliven Energy

Energy. The raw material of engagement is energy. It takes energy to engage and authentic engagement contributes to our energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms: mental, emotional, physical, organizational, and spiritual. Spiritual energy is the energy invested in something greater than ourselves and when you look closely at work and managing people it is always something greater than ourself or there would be no need for managers. We must strive towards mastery of physical, mental, and emotional energy.

Leverage Strengths

Strengths. Engagement is strong stuff. When you know your strengths, live your strengths, and leverage your strengths in the service of others you will have an increase in  engagement. To bring out the strengths of others we must be aware of our own strengths. Powerful managers “spot” employees’ strengths and make strength training a daily endeavor.

Make Meaning

Meaning. For work to sustain and enrich people it must be meaningful. Those who have a why to work can bear almost any how and a sense of meaningful work instills a strong and rich intrinsic motivation. Progress, when it is meaningful, can be one of the best events of our day.

Master Moments

Moments. Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments; from high quality interactions and 45-second engaging conversations to the power to transform interruptions into touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. Working in the moment also reduces stress. As Stephen Rechtschaffen stated: “there is no stress in the present moment.”

Enhance Well-being

Well-being. We need to find wellbeing inside of work. There are things we can do outside of work but how we promote and enhance well-being within work is becoming increasingly important as mobile devices makes work portable and 24/7. We must eliminate toxic workplace poisoned with a lack of respect or mutuality. We must create a profound wellbeing where people leave work enlivened and enriched rather than depleted and deadened.

If you would like to arrange for a keynote or a workshop for your company, conference or organization contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone 204 254 2130.

Employee engagement guidance for managers of virtual teams

Informative Webinar with Yael Zofi Monday November 14

The managers guide. I completed reading Yael Zofi’s wonderful book, A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams. Yael has created a powerful and practical guide for managers of virtual teams.  You will learn how to create trust and accountability, navigate through communication challenges, resolve conflicts, and ensure deliverable get out the door.

A virtual team – whether across the street or across the world – is a team whose members simultaneously work together to a common purpose, while physically apart.

Virtual challenges. Engaging virtual teams is all about connection and finding powerful and connected approaches to handle some of the numerous challenges:

• Relationships
• Performance
• Communication
• Delegation
• Team Building
• E-Mail
• Conflict
• Promotion
• Teleconferencing
• Walking the Talk
• Travel
• Etc.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of trust and accountability in business (as with all human) relationships. Accountability and trust are spoken of in the same breath because they are interrelated. Accountability  provides  the energy for the virtual team’s day-to-day activities, but trust is the larger concept and at the very core of human interactions. And trust develops over time. (p. 98).  

Zofi goes on to map out and help us navigate the road to realizing and achieving accountability and trust with our virtual team.

Webinar.  Join Yael Zofi for a free webinar conversation on How to Manage and Engage Virtual Teams on Monday November 14 from 11:00 AM to 11:40 am EST. If you cannot attend the webinar will be recorded and put up in the video section of the Employee Engagement Network later that day.

Here are a few snippets on engagement from Tanith Dodge, the HR director for Marks & Spencer

Employee Engagement and Engaged Wellbeing with Attitiude

A Heretic’s Manifesto of Engaged Wellbeing: Let’s think (and act) differently just for the health of it.

A new view of wellbeing. I believe we have too much fluff and far too many mistaken notions about wellbeing and wellness at work. I have believed this for 30 years but just recently has it coalesced together into a Heretic’s Manifesto of Wellbeing. I do write about this frivolously having been an employee assistance counselor for 15 years and a university educator in educational and counseling psychology for 25 years. I have always though about wellbeing and wellness differently but now I decided to be more declarative about this personal positive deviancy.

A wellbeing epiphany. A few weeks ago, I was teaching a short course for blue collar workers on overcoming stress and engaged wellbeing. They were a skeptical group who did not necessarily want to be there and approached the topic with a high degree of defensiveness. This was no time for fluffy soft skills yet I wanted to fully contribute to their wellbeing and knew they could benefit from a focus on wellbeing that was real, robust and respectful. I deviated from my plan and realized this group’s rapt attention and interest was bringing out my personal weave of wellness in a way that even I had never fully heard before.

Dodging a bullet. When the session was over one of the guys came up at the end. He told me he hated motivational speakers and that he got nothing from them. Before the workshop he borrowed some change from a friend and his friend had a small caliber bullet in his pocket (gives you an idea of the audience) and he borrowed the change from his friend plus the bullet saying he may need it as he had to listen to some speaker (me). He handed me the bullet, the most creative expression of gratitude I have every received as a speaker, voiced a big thank you, and really did make my day!

Finding the inner heretic. The honest rant and direct communication with the group lead to the articulation of the following points.

33 Key Points From A Heretic’s Manifesto and Guide to Better Wellbeing at Work:

• We must find wellbeing inside of work and not wait until we are outside of work at the end of our day or in retirement.
• Hope is a misguided future perspective taking us away from where we can really make a difference.
• There is no stress in the present moment so strive to be where you are.
• Self-esteem is an evaluative trap that snares you like cheese snares a mouse before the snap in the trap.
• Life comes before work and there is no such thing as work/life balance.
• Well-being is only a concept until we engage in well-doing.
• Ignorance is more important than knowledge in fostering and enhancing wellbeing.
• People don’t actually hear most feedback unless they feel safe and safety is the only way to overcome most of our problems.
• Genuine caring trumps professional competence in helping relationships.
• Achieving  happiness is a shallow and insignificant approach to living.
• Structure trumps willpower in wellbeing efforts.
• Powerful questions we ask ourself are the ideal WD40 for a brain clogged by an amygdala seizure.
• Wellbeing is strong stuff. We must know, live and leverage our strengths in the service of others.
• It take energy directed towards wellbeing to get energy and when you are depleted this is a real hindrance to experiencing wellbeing
• Relaxation is the anemic aspirin of stress management and can actually cause stress.
• What lessens your stress today could be a major contributor of stress tomorrow.
• There are no algorithmic certainties of wellbeing only heuristic probabilities of success.
• In life and work you are going to fart, fumble, and fall. You are human. It is not about avoiding falling down it is about how you pick yourself back up again. Everyone is screwed up: I am not okay, you are not okay and that is okay.
• Placebos are examples of caring made tangible.
• Employee wellbeing is not a soft skill just as accounting is not a hard skill.  Wellbeing embraces fluid skills when the fixed parts of our life are in need of repair.
• Reality is overrated, living through positive illusion, not delusion,  is powerful and practical.
• Wellbeing isn’t a personal endeavor it  is a social phenomenon.
• Only you are responsible for your own wellbeing but others are accountable for your wellbeing just as you are accountable for their wellbeing.
• No one can upset you after 90 seconds.
• Compliance is the anemic byproduct of power.
• We do not resist change we resist coercion and what keeps us in place is the gravity of the familiar.
• If life throws you a lemon don’t make lemonade…duck.
• Positive thinking must be changed into a more authentic constructive thinking. Lots of  bad things do happen and positive thinking does not make it go away.
• Bad is at least twice as salient as good in most situations so we must tip the scales of good for good.
• Most of what we know really isn’t so.
• Wellness tips like this without personal evaluation and experimentation can create a  misguided tyranny of tips towards more stress. The Buddha said, “we must be a lamp unto ourselves.”
• Contradiction is only troublesome if you are locked into rigid thinking.
• Take a long shot, Charlie Chaplin once said, “life is a tragedy in close up and a comedy in long shot.” How long does it take you to get a long shot on things?

Are you ready for some engaged wellbeing with attitude? David Zinger would be delighted to offer this new workshop for your group, organization or conference. It can be delivered as a one hour speech to a half day workshop with  audiences ranging from 10 people to a 10,000.

Contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone him at 204 254 2130 to learn more or start on a new and authentic path to wellbeing.

The Importance of Sustainable Engagement in Environment, Health, and Safety

Leverage engagement to achieve environmental and sustainability results.

The end goal is to improve your company’s performance and competitive position. But to do that, you need to get people engaged in the hard and rewarding work of greening your core business, your strategies, your operations, and your products and services. When your employees are more knowledgeable about and connected to environmental issues, your chances of getting there go way up. But here’s the best part for tight times: engagement and behavior changes are close to free. (Andrew Winston, Green Recovery, p. 144)

Important engagement. Engagement is directed towards results in the model I offer for employee engagement. We are realizing the importance of creating and working towards results in environment, health, safety, and sustainability aspects of business and life. We must engage with these issues before the only factors that drive this engagement are fear, urgency, and panic.

NAEM Forum insight. I attended and presented at NAEM’s Forum on Environmental, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Success in the New Economic Era and was made fully aware of the importance of engagement in these key concerns.  It is not my intent to outline the exceptional content from the conference, you can view nine short video interviews listed at the end of this post to learn more about the specific content. It is my intent to encourage employee engagement directed towards these important issues before our engagement is mandated by fear and limitation.

Sustainable-focused engagement is not a fad. We must engage employees fully in environment, health, safety, and sustainability issues in their work and personal lives.  If we are to make changes it is fine to demand compliance, craft strategy and write policy but change comes from full engagement.  Engagement is connection and if we remain disconnected from environment, health, and safety there will be few businesses and even fewer employees to engage.

From periphery to core. At times I fear that these areas of concern are perceived by many in our workplaces as an extra,  not a central issue. Our resources are being depleted, our safety is at risk, and our health is threatened yet we have the power to do something about it. Yes, having a green day is a nice idea but let’s sustain this through the daily focused work of all employees from the custodian to the CEO. Andrew Winston, a keynote speaker and author of Green Recovery, concluded his presentation at the conference with the two-question quotation: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Value and values. We must be creative and focused on the value created by our environment, health, safety, and sustainability work. These four factors touch upon so many key values in the workplace. I find engaged work in this area touches upon such values as: connection, acceptance, belonging, cooperation, communication, community, compassion, consideration, empathy, inclusion, mutuality, respect, safety, stability, security, support, trust, and wellbeing.

5  invitations to engage in environment, health, safety, and sustainability

1. Make the important  urgent through data and story. Make the importance of sustainability more urgent with sound data and compelling stories that encourage responses and actions rather than only ringing alarm bells that promote fear and paralyze initiative.
2. Broaden the color spectrum of this work beyond green. We must engage in these issues by going in all direction at once. Beyond thinking global and acting local we can work at engaging customers and suppliers in ensuring sustainable business for the benefit of all. This is not just a green issue, it is an issue that spans every color and facet within the broad spectrum of business and work.
3. Reliance on compliance is too anemic. Don’t make environment, sustainability and health just  a compliance issue — make it multiple compelling and irresistible invitations. Compliance smacks of orders and power rather than authentic connection and caring to achieve important results for all. We need heartfelt and hearty actions by everyone involved in work.
4. Ensure programs and events are icing not cake. Ensure programs and events are only small tangible demonstrations of a much bigger commitment to sustainability. Don’t leave your work locked in a blue box. As these issues loom larger I foresee the day when enlightened organizations will balance their strategies and decisions between two CEO’s: the Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Environmental Officer.
5. Stop the nonsense by making cents and sense. A lot of our current practices just don’t make sense for long term wellbeing of organizations and individuals. Ensure that your efforts are good business while also being  good for business. In the long run our work and results in this area must make both cents and sense to achieve full sustainability.

Three minutes on engagement. Here is a 3 minute interview I gave after my session co-presenting with Kevin Orr, Environmental Manager - Kimberly- Clark Corp;  Mark Fowler, Environmental Health and Safety Manager - Invivo, and Marty Moran, Division Environmental Manager -  General Mills Inc on Engaging Employees to Realize Your EHS & Sustainability Vision. I was very impressed by the work being done by these three men in their organizations to advance a sustainable vision.  (If the video fails to open in this window, click here):

Nine Interviews from the conference. To learn more about the current thinking and practices presented at the conference watch these short video interviews conducted by Elizabeth Ryan from NAEM:

• Patagonia’s Common Threads: An Unconventional Lifecycle Management Approach
• Managing Today for a Resource-Constrained Future
• Owens Corning’s Sustainability Approach
• Why Reducing Resources Can Drive Innovation
• The Importance of EHS Strategic Succession Planning
• Social Metrics: The Next Sustainability Challenge
• The Benefits of Employee Engagement
• AEP’s Sandy Nessing Reflects on Keynote Address by Author Andrew Winston
• Andrew Winston: Why the Greening of Business is a Cultural Imperative

Employee Engagement for Managers

Here are the 10 things managers must do if they want to  increase employee engagement.

Achieve Results

Results. Engagement is more than a feeling, survey number, or a YouTube happy dance. We engage in actions directed towards results. The first key to consider when acting to increase employee  engagement is what results are you working to achieve and how can you involve all employees in formulating those results or achieving those results? Powerful results matter to managers, organizations, employees, and customers.

Path Progress

Progress.  The most overlooked source of engagement and motivation is to experience progress. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer has demonstrated that progress is the single biggest key to motivation and engagement for knowledge workers.  Learn how to structure work for progress and especially to guard against the demoralizing and disengaging experience of setbacks.

Maximize Performance

Performance. Performance is anything worthy of your attention. How do you make key performances worthy of employee’s attention and how do you offer feedback that is actually heard and acted upon by employees? We are witnessing the early stages of a significant fusion of performance management and employee engagement that may address some of the gaps we have experienced in attempting to have performance management do a better job of improving performance.

Foster Recognition

Recognition. Without recognition our workplaces are void of the human element. Are you fully letting  employees know that you see them, you are thinking of them and you both recognize and appreciate them. Authentic recognition is so much more than an annual gala or occasional gift card for good behavior. Recognition is social, strategic, and powerful. Recognition is the “re-thinking” of engagement in our everyday interactions and recognition for progress creates a strong multiplier for motivation and engagement.

Build Relationships

Relationships. We need to focus on the two “R’s” of engagement, results and relationships. How do our efforts achieve results while also building relationships?. Our brains are wired for the social element of work and in some ways all managers are becoming new versions of “social workers.” While our staff may have a locus of engagement on tasks we need to ensure that we have a strong locus of engagement on people.

Enliven Energy

Energy. The raw material of engagement is energy. It takes energy to engage and authentic engagement contributes to our energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms: mental, emotional, physical, organizational, and spiritual. Spiritual energy is the energy invested in something greater than ourselves and when you look closely at work and managing people it is always something greater than ourself or there would be no need for managers. We must strive towards mastery of physical, mental, and emotional energy.

Leverage Strengths

Strengths. Engagement is strong stuff. When you know your strengths, live your strengths, and leverage your strengths in the service of others you will have an increase in  engagement. To bring out the strengths of others we must be aware of our own strengths. Powerful managers “spot” employees’ strengths and make strength training a daily endeavor.

Make Meaning

Meaning. For work to sustain and enrich people it must be meaningful. Those who have a why to work can bear almost any how and a sense of meaningful work instills a strong and rich intrinsic motivation. Progress, when it is meaningful, can be one of the best events of our day.

Master Moments

Moments. Engagement resides in the moment. Learn to master moments; from high quality interactions and 45-second engaging conversations to the power to transform interruptions into touch points. When we balance challenge and skills we enter the flow zone as we dwell and work within the moment. Working in the moment also reduces stress. As Stephen Rechtschaffen stated: “there is no stress in the present moment.”

Enhance Well-being

Well-being. We need to find wellbeing inside of work. There are things we can do outside of work but how we promote and enhance well-being within work is becoming increasingly important as mobile devices makes work portable and 24/7. We must eliminate toxic workplace poisoned with a lack of respect or mutuality. We must create a profound wellbeing where people leave work enlivened and enriched rather than depleted and deadened.

The Workshop. If you would like to arrange for a keynote or a workshop for your company, conference or organization contact David Zinger at zingerdj@gmail.com or phone 204 254 2130.

How engaged are your employees in environment, health, and safety?

Tucson environment health and safety. I am delighted to attend the NAEM Environmental Health and Safety Conference in Tucson this week. The National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM) empowers corporate leaders to advance environmental stewardship, create safe and healthy workplaces, and promote global sustainability.  It is the largest professional community for corporate environmental, health and safety, and sustainability decision-makers.

Employee engagement and EHS. It will be an honor to be part of a session on Engaging Employees to Realize Your Environmental, Health, Safety and Sustainability Session. I look forward to working with Kevin Orr from Kimberly-Clark, Mark Fowler from Invivo, and Marty Moran from General Mills.

Bill O’Rourke and tone at the top. I encourage you to watch this five minute video of Alcoa’s Bill O’Rourke discussing the role of the EHS Manager in sustainability progress. He offers some good pointers for anyone involved in fostering leadership and makes a great case that a real key to full engagement is stretching our vision of possible and  the tone at the top.

If the video does not load in this window, click here.

David Zinger is an employee engagement export who developed a 14 element model of employee engagement. David is currently involved in designing and delivering workshops for managers on the 10 keys to unlocking full employee engagement.

Unemployment make employee engagement impossible.

Here are some souring statistics from the UK taken from the BBC Website.

• UK unemployment total reaches 17-year high.
• UK unemployment rose by 114,000 between June and August to 2.57 million, a 17-year high, according to official figures.
• The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate also increased to 8.1%.
• The jobless total for 16 to 24-year-olds hit a record high of 991,000 in the quarter, a jobless rate of 21.3%.
• The number of people out of work and claiming benefits rose 17,500 to 1.6 million in September.
• Other figures showed a record cut in the number of part-time workers, down by 175,000, and there was also a record reduction of 74,000 in the number of over-65s in employment.