Five Employee Engagement Must-Haves

Are your employees jumping for joy? See why you don’t have a choice but to make sure they are.

Copyright Edyn Roberts 2014. All rights reserved. Use and redistribution through permission only.

The holy grail?

Employee engagement has value, everyone wants it, but no one seems to be

able to find it.

Three reasons to care about employee engagement:

1. Say - more positive things about their place of work, aiding in positive brand reinforcement !2. Stay - Intend to stay, saving recruiting and training costs !3. Strive - Consistently achieve more and outperform unengaged workers

!Recruiting costs can be an estimated 1.5x annual salary. And, more alarming, experts are predicting turnover may rise to 65%. !Quick math - what is the cost to your organization of replacing 65% of your entire workforce at 1.5x their salary?

How big is the disengagement problem?

In a recent Dale Carnegie survey, only 1/3 of respondents reported being engaged at work. !

With the productivity costs of lack of engagement affecting over 70%, there is a lot of work to do.

26%

45%

29%

EngagedPartially EngagedDisengaged

There are 5 things that centre on the individual, that create a sense of engagement for employees. !They start at the core of every employee, at the very core of their role within the organization. !It’s often called “right fit” in broader terms.

Where does your company

stand on these?

!Do you have

your employees’ hearts and

minds?

1. Capability

Knowledge and skills to do the job !• Know how to complete the work? • Physically/technically able to do so? !If he doesn’t know how to do the work or to do the work effectively, the work cannot be done or the result is potentially dangerous, and very likely customer impacting, depending on the work.

2. Interest/Enjoyment

Time flies when you’re having fun. Do what you love and love what you do. !Bored minds wander, less is accomplished, with lower quality. It isn’t fun to spend 8 hours or more doing something you do like, don’t know how to do, or do poorly ! Result? Increased absenteeism, Less, poorly performed work being completed.

An Important thing to remember: !

Just because someone does something well, doesn’t mean they like doing it. It just means they’ve had a lot of practice.

3. Opportunity

Too often superstars become middling or worse, poor

performers, because they are in the wrong job, just filling a seat,

often doing something they don’t like instead of soaring in

the role they were born to have. !

If you wan’t to have someone shine, you have to give them

the right opportunity with alignment with capability and

interest.

4. Confidence• Success = confidence = continued success.

• Continued success often leads to professional growth through more challenging work

• Success also leads to recognition and other motivators leading to higher work engagement.

• People who are good at their jobs and have success have increased confidence, and feel positive about doing the job.

• People with low confidence are generally risk-averse, are less likely to participate in meetings or to take on challenges. All of this can lead bosses and leaders to believe they are ineffective. And they are right. Again, wrong job fit.

!Tiger Woods doesn’t doubt that he is going to win every golf tournament he enters. !He has: • Exceptional capability • Loves doing it • Has the opportunity • BELIEVES he can win !Winning, like success is a habit, and so is losing. Much comes from the confidence that success is achievable. !Tiger doesn’t win every tournament, but he is in the situation to do so

5. Confidence of ManagementLack of confidence on behalf of managers and directors will probably kill employee engagement faster than anything. !Most people are willing to try new things, and to stick with them, while they build some skill at it, if management is behind them, supporting and encouraging them. !If you don't value what employees have to offer and are confident that they can perform, they will lose confidence in themselves, they will likely like their jobs less, and their performance will begin to suffer.

The very best companies have the right people in key positions, and it shows in employee engagement. !People want to work there and people don’t often leave, and they get things done. !People in the right role can do the job, they do it well, and they enjoy it. !They have the opportunity to show what they can do. !These folks already know what they can do, and the trust and confidence of management to do so, makes them shine. !And everybody wins.

Remember, if you need an animal to climb a tree, you could spend a lot of time,

money and energy teaching a dog to do it.

Or, you could get a squirrel