Employee Engagement Chronicle #3

David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Chronicle is your primary source for current news, views, reviews, and research on employee engagement. Each entry includes a link to an article or post with a short verbatim tidbit from the article. If you are intrigued, I encourage you to click on the author or source name at the start of each summary to study the entire article.

Get the Point

• Engaged employees can answer the the questions of getting, giving, belonging and growing.
• Leadership key: unlock engagement with strong connections.
• Leadership: Stop standing out and start fitting in.
• Empower to engage

Jim Aspuland and John H. Flemming wrote about where employee engagement happens in the most recent Gallup Management Journal. The workplace manager of today needs to offer compelling answers to the following 4 questions of employees: (1) What do I get? (2) What do I give?  (3) Do I belong? (4) How can I grow? Here is a short snippet from this insightful article: Whatever their motivation for joining the company, their local work environment either energizes and nourishes them and fosters their learning and growth or starves them and frustrates their development. When this happens, they will leave the company — or even worse — hang around doing the minimum needed until it’s time for retirement. Engaged employees, in contrast, are involved and enthusiastic about what is happening in their local work environment.

Richard Gorham states that a leader’s ultimate goal is connect to engage: If an employee is engaged, it means that he feels he has a personal stake in the outcome – an honest desire to contribute to something greater than himself, something even more important than monetary gain. The engaged employee has emotion tied to her work. Perhaps that emotion comes out of a sense of loyalty and connection to her leader or other team members. Top leaders understand that in order to connect with their workforce, they need to leverage the power of emotion. Only by connecting with the individual, can a leader create a powerful team consisting of employees who are personally committed, and emotionally/physically engaged.

Shirley Poertner write about “Standing Out? Or Fitting In? She states: Leadership is now …the ability to help shape –not dictate — what people already want –not have– to do…helping people reach consensus on what matters to them…bonding with followers in a sense of shared identity that provides a blueprint for action…about representing a common “us”

Jim Kissane focuses on workforce development and encouraged leaders to focus on employee engagement: Employee engagement is more important today than ever.  Business leaders need to encourage activities that make employees feel more participative in the business.   You also need to reward people who learn more about their jobs, new trends, solve problems, and are willing to make changes.  Employees who feel empowered are far less likely to become chronically absent or quit.