Direction, purpose, knowledge and motivation. Every employee seeks these yet few employers
successfully provide them to their workforce. Without them, though, you are never going to get the kind
of passionate effort and commitment you need from your employees to succeed in these competitively
shark-infested waters. So, then, what to do?
As the headline of this post would suggest, it isn’t always about money. It isn’t even about things that
cost money. It’s about driving employee engagement – the ‘pixie dust’ of companies with inspired
workforces.
The #1 Best Selling Business book A Tale of Two Employees discusses, among other things, promoting
engagement by providing clarity of goals and expectations. Not esoteric goals, but extremely specific,
concrete and measurable ones.
Take customer service, for example, an area where every organization can always do better. Instead
of simply exhorting your employees with hollow sounding words like, “let’s strive for better customer
service,” you need to translate those words into something observable and countable! Then measure
your ‘customer satisfaction success’ REGULARLY through surveys, client-retention rates, or, some
behavioral activity such as response times. For your switchboard operator (assuming you still have a live
person doing this) measuring response time might mean something like answering the phone ‘on – or
before – the first ring’.
But, regardless of what and how you measure, don’t forget to give frequent feedback to your employees
on the progress being achieved so they can – early on – decide either to keep on doing what’s working
or change their tack when things are not. Nothing is more discouraging than being told you were not
doing what was being expected when there is no opportunity for self correction or coaching to get
things right.
More ways to generate truly effective employee engagement are discussed, in a simple and
straightforward manner, in the book A Tale of Two Employees. It contains very many useful ideas
for those in a leadership role and invaluable lessons for leaders who appreciate the value of
execution. You won’t want to stop reading till you finish. And you’ll be able to implement its
ideas immediately with instant results. Be sure to snag a copy!
