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12 Tips for Virtual Employee Engagement

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Don’t Be So Remote 20140428_172531 It was a pleasure to write this blog post for Fuze, an excellent platform for mobile work,  on 12 tips for virtual employee engagement. Here is one of my opening paragraphs and one of the 12 tips. I encourage you to go to the full article to learn more.

I believe the key question for managers of remote workers and distributed teams are to ensure the team and workers feel a part of the organization and work rather than feeling apart from the organization. We want our virtual workers and teams to be a part of something greater while also playing their part in achieving results and being engaged with the various facets of work. Mobile managers must prevent mobile employees becoming detached from their team, distant from their organization, disengaged from their work, and disappointed in their managers.

Tip 2: Go bad. According to volumes of research reviewed by psychologist, Roy Baumeister  bad is twice as strong as good. We must not shirk away from bad news, setbacks, or bad behavior. It is vital that managers mitigate against the disengagement and demoralization of setbacks. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in The Progress Principle demonstrated that setbacks were the single biggest cause of lack of motivation and engagement for knowledge workers and the most common source of those setbacks were during collaborative work. Progress, the single biggest source of engagement for knowledge workers was most frequently experienced during collaboration. Don’t shy away from working with bad news, setbacks, or bad behavior.

It has been a terrific to work with Fuze as one of the knowledge partners on the employee engagement network.

David Zinger is an employee engagement speaker and expert who is doing more of his work virtually and focusing more on helping others foster, enhance, and increase virtual employee engagement. This post was written in Winnipeg in late August and posted while David is in Singapore to work on employee engagement and read by you as you work and reside any place in the world. The picture was taken while David was flying between Regina and Saskatoon Saskatchewan to conduct sessions on employee engagement.

Employee Engagement and the Game of Strong Progress

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Employee Engagement: Making Progress with Strengths

The pyramid of employee engagement is a 10 block model of employee engagement. Here is a link to a 50 page booklet on the pyramid. After completing the strengths inventory, Strengthscope, from Strengths Partnership in the UK,  I embarked on a systematic application of my 7 significant strengths to each of the 10 blocks of the pyramid. This will make my engagement work more robust while also enhancing personal wellbeing through the application of strengths in the service of others. There are 10 posts in this series. To learn more, take the strengthscope yourself, and to be interactive on strengths and engagement plan to attend an educational workshop in London on the importance of strengths for innovation and excellence with a fusion of the pyramid of employee engagement.

Making Progress and Creativity

 

Making progress is a significant contributor to engagement for knowledge workers. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer did some ground breaking work on progress and motivation in their research for the book, The Progress Principle.  We must guard against setbacks and achieve progress, even small wins.

To turbocharge progress for myself I have been applying my creativity strength from my significant 7 strengths to progress and created a work and wellbeing game for 2012. The game platform is a PowerPoint deck and the purpose of the game is to achieve greater work output while also enhancing wellbeing.  To see an outline of what I have done so far, click here.

I have enjoyed applying creativity to the construction of a personal and meaningful way to plan and monitor progress. I divided my work into 24 minute time periods and I strive to achieve 6 of these periods most days at work. I have worked hard to ensure that progress is achieved on a daily basis and that setbacks are temporary. I have given myself 100 bonus points every week to accelerate progress. To minimize setbacks, if I fail to achieve the 24 minute periods for more than 3 days in a row I scale back the time to 18 minutes.

The game is simple, yet meaningful to me, and has helped me to achieve results through a playful combination of progress and creativity. Here is a slide I used for one of my days of work and wellbeing:

To learn more about your 7 strengths and how they can be applied to work, wellbeing, innovation, and excellence plan to attend the London UK Strength and Engagement Workshop Wednesday November 28 from 13:00 to 18:00:

London Workshop on Strength Based Approaches to Leadership

I invite you to attend an afternoon workshop sponsored by Strengths Partnership on The Leaders Role in Optimising Strengths and Engagement to Achieve Innovation and Excellence. I will be presenting/facilitating on the Pyramid of Employee Engagement and Michael Farry, HR Director for PhotoBox, will also be presenting on how to build a culture of positive leadership, collaboration and innovation through a systematic, practical and integrated change and development programme.

For a modest fee of £75 plus VAT, you will receive:

  •  Entrance to the conference and networking over drinks after the event
  •  An opportunity to take the Strengthscope360™ profiler and receive feedback
  •  A free leadership book entitled “Stretch – Leading Beyond Boundaries”
  •  Delegate pack containing proven and practical tools to help optimise workforce strengths and engagement at the individual, team and organisational levels
  •  An invitation to join the Strengths HR Forum (over 1,300 members) and the Employee Engagement Network (over 5,000 members)

To register click here.

Next Post in the Series: Employee Engagement: Strengthening Relationships

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert. He will be in the UK in late November to support the Go Live event for the UK Employee Engagement Task Force and to co-lead an afternoon workshop on the fusion of employee engagement and strengths for innovation and excellence.