• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

  • Home
  • Topics
  • Blog
    • About
  • People Artistry
  • Resources
    • Model
    • ENGAGE: The Course
    • People Artistry
    • 10 Principles of Engagement
    • What Others are Saying about David
    • Clients
    • Zengage
    • Books
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Archives for Ramiro Garces

An employee engagement lesson from Berlin: It is the cook and the recipe.

April 2, 2013 by David Zinger Leave a Comment

How to create employee engagement.

Brandenburg Gate

I presented two sessions on employee engagement in Berlin on March 13 & 14 sponsored by the Connecting Group. The speakers and participants were exceptional. Certainly a major benefit of presenting at conferences is learning from all the other presenters. I was inspired by the engaged and passionate presentation of Ramiro Garces, Vice President Human Resources Latin America at Kimberly-Clark. I previously blogged about his Sunday Question Lesson.

During his presentation on employee engagement at Kimberly-Clark he frequently said employee engagement work is not about the what it is about the how. He used the analogy of eating a great meal, asking the cook for the recipe, taking the recipe  home, making it, and finding out it does not taste as good as the original.  Although we can copy a recipe it does not mean that we can replicate the recipe. Good cooks “own” what they cook by adding their own flair and “how ” of cooking.

Many of us in employee engagement are in pursuit of best practices or good recipes to improve or increase employee engagement. Many times these recipes fail to work the way we expected. For example, Gallup has demonstrated the power of holding strength based conversations with employees about their performance. This is the what (strength base conversations). But without the how (having the readiness, willingness, and ability to hold these conversations) the approach can feel creepy, be inauthentic, miss the mark, or lack impact.

By all means find out the top recipes in engagement but when you start to “cook” engagement at work, own it. Make it specific to your organization and culture. Change a few ingredients if that works better.  And by all means keep tasting or testing what you are cooking for engagement.

Zinger Associates

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert who has packaged his recipes in the Pyramid of Employee Engagement. If you decide to unpack these recipes make sure you own it because it is less about the recipes and more about the cooks.

 

Filed Under: Employee Engagement Tagged With: Berlin, David Zinger, Employee Engagement, employee engagement recipes, owning engagement, Pyramid of Employee Engagement, Ramiro Garces

Employee Engagement: The Sunday Question

March 21, 2013 by David Zinger 1 Comment

I attended a powerful two-day employee engagement session in Berlin on March 13 & 14 sponsored by the Connecting Group (thanks for setting this up Sadie). The speakers and participants were exceptional. It is not my intent to go into great detail with every presentation but I will write a few blog posts about engagement elements that stood out for me.

I was inspired by the engaged and passionate presentation of Ramiro Garces, Vice President Human Resources Latin America at Kimberly-Clark. I believe small is the new significant in employee engagement and Ramiro offered us a fantastic question for employees.

Employees are encouraged to stop for 30 seconds every Sunday to ask themselves:

How do I  feel about going back to work tomorrow?

What a terrific tool to think about the week ahead and create a transitional hinge between Sunday and Monday morning. If the emotions are positive great. If the emotions are negative employees are encouraged to talk with their supervisor or manager or to do something to change it themselves. This is a powerful example of a one question informal survey that really gives an employee a pulse check and changes disengagement from a punishable offence into a trigger for a conversation.

I encourage you to adopt this question and maybe even ask it right now: How do you feel about going back to work tomorrow?

ZingerNEWLogo_Apr.5.2012

David Zinger is a global student and expert on employee engagement bringing world class lessons in engagement to his clients and audiences. He feels great about going back to work tomorrow!

Filed Under: Employee Engagement Tagged With: David Zinger, Employee Engagement, engagement emotions, Kimberly-Clark, Ramiro Garces, sunday question

David Zinger

Email: david@davidzinger.com
Phone 204 254 2130

Copyright © 2023 · Aspire Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in