Pyramid of Employee Engagement — ENGAGE with David Zinger

Help Yourself to The 10 Best Free and Fantastic Employee Engagement Resources

September 24, 2015 by David Zinger 3 Comments

Fantastic Free Employee Engagement Resources (plus a bonus resource).

I am celebrating my 61st birthday today. At my age, I don’t need any presents but I’d like to give some, so here are 11 employee engagement presents for you.

Here is a bonus bonus resource for anyone interested in using gamification for managers: Game On

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert.

Employee Engagement and Working with Halogen Software

September 11, 2015 by David Zinger 2 Comments

I am in Ottawa right now at the Halogen Software Conference.

It was a pleasure yesterday to facilitate a session on employee engagement. Halogen Software was welcoming, supportive, fun, and well-organized. My session went very well as I outlined the pyramid of employee engagement and even had the opportunity to have about 25 participants purchase an advance copy of the new book on People Artists by Peter Hart and myself.

It was an honour to give 3 People Artists awards to Connie Costigan, Melany Gallant, and Zoryana Cherwick for their ability to draw out the best in people through their work on the prolific, helpful and informative Talentspace blog. I think this site is worth a visit at least once a week.

For two and a half years I have written a monthly blog on employee engagement for Halogen. This was my first opportunity to meet them in person and I was impressed about who they are and how they work. Thank you Halogen for making my day!

Get Small and Simple for Employee Engagement

August 25, 2015 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

In employee engagement — SMALL IS THE NEW SIGNIFICANT!

Reading time = 54 seconds

Small2 Simple2

How has that big employee engagement program been doing? Is your large employee engagement initiative making a difference? I have no doubt that employee engagement can make a big difference but that does not mean employee engagement approaches have to be big to matter. Small is the new significant.

Pyramid of Employee Engagement and Engaged Well-Being

We need to determine and act on small and simple behavioral practices that can be practiced daily by leaders, managers, and employees themselves. I am currently at work on taking the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement – making it action-oriented – articulating the actions as simple rules – and helping leaders, managers, and employees reduce the 10-block pyramid to a personalized 3-block pyramid embracing simple rules to govern their engagement work.

Here is a perspective from the School of Life that inspires me to keep on this path:

Rikyū reminds us that there is a latent sympathy between big ideas about life and the little everyday things, such as certain drinks, cups, implements and smells. These are not cut off from the big themes; they can make those themes more alive for us. It is the task of philosophy not just to formulate ideas, but also to work out mechanisms by which they may stick more firmly and viscerally in our minds.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Winnipeg, Canada

Employee Engagement: Nobody Wants an F

August 11, 2015 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

HRE Daily recently published an article entitled: Companies Surveyed Flunk Employee Engagement.

Here was the conclusion in the article:

“HR should be leading the charge to raise the firm’s employee engagement maturity level,” says Bruce Temkin, customer experience transformist and managing partner at the Temkin Group. “Employee engagement is one of the most strategic opportunities for HR professionals.” Meanwhile, survey participants point to three common obstacles that prevent them from turning this situation around: the lack of a clear employee engagement strategy, inconsistent buy-in from middle managers, and limited funding along with inconsistent buy-in across the leadership team.

I think the article points to some serious challenges in engagement. I personally, don’t care for the term “buy-in” for engagement as I am not sure that fits with what it means to be engaged. I wonder if the “buy-in” challenge for managers stems from being overloaded with so many things and perceiving employee engagement as something extra they need to do. I don’t want to be sold on engagement or sell it. Having said that I realize what a challenge it is to invite, converse, question, and co-create engagement. Yet this approach costs very little and alleviates the limited funding obstacle.

My focus is on small, simple, strategic, structural, and sustainable actions that can move the dial on engagement. If you want to seize the strategic opportunity of employee engagement I encourage you to focus on the big impact while using small actions.

In the second half of 2015 I am creating 11 simple rules that all employees can follow to increase their own engagement and supplementing the simple rules with how managers and leaders can foster that in the people they lead and manage.

Pyramid of Employee Engagement Model

This is based on my pyramid of employee engagement and enhances: results, performance, progress, relationships, recognition, moments, strengths, meaning, well-being, and energy.

David Zinger uses the pyramid of employee engagement as a speaker and consultant to show an inexpensive and behavioral pathway to improving employee engagement for the benefit of all.

No Time for Employee Engagement? Really?

August 4, 2015 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

Reading time: 54 seconds

Here is a headline from an engagement article from last week.

Who’s Got Time to Manage Employee Engagement?

I liked the post and the argument. I appreciated Johnathan Bright’s conclusion:

It is, as ever, a question of trust. The other question is of time. So, managers, get the results of your survey, find out the needs, set your KPIs, and then get the help of someone with the time and know how to implement the right strategy. After all, you’ve got other stuff to be getting on with.

To me, we need to weave engage into “the other stuff.” I fully concur with the lack of time available so rather than an extra lets ensure engagement is woven into the fabric of work with small, simple, strategic, structural, and sustainable actions.

I am currently working on 11 simple rules of employee engagement based on the 5 S’s stated above and derived from the 10-block pyramid of employee engagement.

Pyramid of Employee Engagement and Engaged Well-Being

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who uses the pyramid of employee engagement to derive simple rules for leaders, managers, and employees to improve engagement for the benefit of all.