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Befuddled: How are we ever going to manage employee engagement?

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Barely Managing

Manager Feedback

Lou Solomon wrote a provocative and insightful post on the Harvard Business Review blog on March 9th that has me very concerned about managers ability to have a positive impact and influence on employee engagement, “Two-Thirds of Managers Are Uncomfortable Communicating with Employees.”  According to the survey many managers are uncomfortable

with becoming vulnerable, recognizing achievements, delivering the “company line,” giving clear directions, crediting others with having good ideas, speaking face to face, and having difficult feedback conversations in general.

I encourage you to read Lou’s post right now and start working on improving the comfort level of your managers for communication and feedback.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert from Canada who was genuinely surprised to hear the high level of uncomfortableness managers have with feedback and communication.

 

 

A Step Towards Infusing Employee Engagement Into Performance Management

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I have been advocating for the infusion of the many silos of understanding work, from employee engagement and performance management to wellbeing and making progress. This week the US government advocated for putting employee engagement into performance management with the Plus. I think this is a step in the right direction when far too many of us have far too much to do and so little time to do it.  I have a concern with using the term plus as it makes it seem you are adding more but if it moves to infusion and synergy of work, I am all for it.

Below is a tweet connecting to the post I wrote about this on LinkedIn

David Zinger from Winnipeg, Canada, is a global employee engagement speaker and expert.

Do you believe forced performance rankings are detrimental to employee engagement?

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Would you rather work for Yahoo or Microsoft? 

Forced Rankings

 

Two articles written on the same day examine the road to forced rankings (Yahoo) and away from forced ranking (Microsoft).

At Yahoo:

Several months after the great work-at-home kerfuffle of 2013, Yahoo employees were up in arms about a new policy that forces managers to rank employees on a bell curve, then fire those at the low end. According to AllThingsD, Marissa Mayer reportedly told Yahoo workers that the rankings weren’t mandatory, but many people disagree. (Business Week November 12)

At Microsoft – Microsoft’s HR chief Lisa Brummel wrote a letter about the end of both ranking and ratings:

No more curve. We will continue to invest in a generous rewards budget, but there will no longer be a pre-determined targeted distribution.  Managers and leaders will have flexibility to allocate rewards in the manner that best reflects the performance of their teams and individuals, as long as they stay within their compensation budget. (The Verge November 12)

These are uncertain times for performance and engagement. It is interesting to see us go in both directions at once. Where do you stand on the role of ratings and rankings for performance management and what do you believe would be best for employee engagement? Would you rather work for Yahoo or Microsoft?

David Zinger Employee Engagement Speaker

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who does not like to be forced to do anything but always tries to perform at his best!

Friday Employee Engagement Factoid #33: Performance

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The 15% Gap

20 20 20

Most organizations need a 20% performance improvement to meet goals across the next year. But conventional performance management can only improve productivity by up to 5%. The key to achieving breakthrough performance is to focus on building employees’ enterprise contribution – the sum of individual task performance and network performance. (Source)

Commentary

We need to engage all employees better in performance management while also striving to make employee engagement more engaging. Does your performance management system connect, excite, energize, and engage? Does it improve both people and performance?

David Zinger is a global employee engagement speaker and expert who teachers the pyramid of employee engagement to help managers and organizations increase engagement, performance, and results.