Simply Engaging

 Engaging employees is one of the many challenges for today’s managers. This has always been true but never more so than in 2021.

Here are a couple of suggestions for you to try to increase employee engagement:

• Solving all the issues facing your team at any one time can be exhausting for any manager. Ask your employees for suggestions to improve productivity or resolve a particularly tricky issue with a customer or client. Take time at each staff meeting or in one-on-one meetings with your employees to ask for their ideas. Simply put—give them a voice.

• Consider asking your employees what processes, reports, or paperwork gets in their way. You may learn that some of what you think is motivating them isn’t and is counterproductive. You certainly don’t want to be a demotivating manager. 

• Refrain from immediately rejecting ideas. Nothing will shut down new ideas quicker than being told “that won’t work” or “we’ve tried that before.” Instead, take the time to consider or even brainstorm these ideas. You might be surprised at the results.

It may take a while for them to be comfortable making suggestions, but give it time. You may solve a problem while finding a new way to energize your staff.

You’ve probably heard that people don’t leave organizations. Rather, they leave managers. Look at the people who manage or supervise others in your organization. 

• Do they listen to their employees? 
• Do they know how to counsel employees who are underperforming? 
• Are they providing coaching to their superstars? 

If the answer is no to any of these questions, the managers and employees may need professional development.

What engagement ideas work for you? We’d love to hear your best engagement ideas so send them on, and we’ll share them in future blogs. In the meantime, you can find additional information about employee engagement in The Big Book of HR which is available on Amazon  https://tinyurl.com/ya5vheak has a chapter devoted to the subject. 

Barbara Mitchell

Celebrate Managers – Boss’s Day 2020

 

If ever there were a year where we needed an excuse to celebrate, it’s 2020. Our world has been turned upside down. We’ve all been thrown by the pandemic into work and life situations we weren’t prepared for by the pandemic.  

Last month we wrote a blog about Management by Walking Around – the concept introduced in the 1980s by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in their book, In Search of Excellence. “How’s that working for you?” as Dr. Phil would ask. When we wrote the award-winning book, The Manager’s Answer Book, one piece of advice we offered for managing remote workers was to use technology. Let’s take a pause on that for a moment.  We’re all weary and stressed from screen time and Zoom meetings these days. If we can’t walk around (managers and employees alike), and if we’re stressed from technology overuse, maybe it’s time to return to some other old-school methods of engaging. 

I remember the year I joined the corporate HR team in a Fortune 500 company. That holiday season I was stunned to receive a holiday card from our vice president. We lived and worked on different coasts and didn’t have much daily interaction. It wasn’t the card itself that touched me; rather, it was the personal note he took the time to write. Every year thereafter I received a card with a note, as did every member of the staff.  The note was either something about a work project or a personal event that he was aware of.  All these years later, I can still remember what some of those notes said. Talk about a motivator and a real leadership quality.

A personal, hand-written note to staff members is a powerful way to keep them engaged. With texts and emails and social media, we’ve lost the art of letter writing. Time to pick it back up. Another old-school method is to simply pick up the telephone and have a one-on-one conversation. It doesn’t have to be long. Just take the time to check in, ask how someone is doing, and mention something positive about their work. 

Of course, this works both ways. Team members should recognize that their bosses are stressed these days as well. If there were ever a year bosses needed to hear how appreciated  they are, it’s 2020. Being a manager is hard work, and being a great boss is even harder. Normally, we’d advise doing something festive for Boss’s Day, which is this Friday, October 16; but remote work and social distancing take away the options of decorating offices and having team lunches. What if everyone sent cards to the boss’s home, or ordered a pizza lunch for the boss and their family? If you want to send them a gift, consider a copy of The Manager’s Answer Book for their library.  We’d be honored if you did so.

Clued-In Leaders

Doug Claffey wrote an article that appeared in The Albuquerque Journal on May 11, 2020 about the importance of strong communication during a crisis. He is the Founder of Energage, an organization that specializes in employee engagement and workplace improvement research.

He used a term in the article that caught my attention: Clued-In Leaders. Clued-in leadership is about upward feedback and employees feeling heard. It caught my attention because a related article that same day about top workplaces in New Mexico contained a quote from an employee at the top-ranked company, T-Mobile, in the large workplace category.  The employee said, “There is something to be said about a company that always has your back and listens to feedback from the front line all the way to the top.”

Claffey went on to explain what happens when organizations struggle with clued-in leadership. “When employees believe senior leaders are out of the loop, it’s harder for them to connect with the organization. And when leaders really aren’t clued in to what’s happening, they’re missing valuable insight from those closest to the customer: their employees.” He offered three ideas for keeping the lines of communication open:

• Communicating through the hierarchy. Ask employees to talk to their managers, and managers to talk to their managers, and finally talk to the senior leadership. This sounds like an open-door policy, but to be effective, it has to practiced, not simply something you put in an employee handbook. 

• Conducting town-hall or all-hands meetings. Whether in-person meetings (which will likely be on hold for a while) or virtual meetings, they are an effective way to communicate key messages and give your employees a voice. I once worked at a company that met with representatives of each department before all-hands meetings to gain insights into what was on employees minds so their concerns could be addressed at the larger meeting.

• Asking your employees for feedback. Claffey suggested pulse surveys as an efficient way to give your employees a voice, capture real-time data and deliver it to the leadership team quickly and directly. Of course if you do conduct any employee survey, you’ve got to commit to act on it and provide feedback to the employees about the survey’s results. Otherwise it becomes a paperwork exercise and can erode trust.

Leader’s communication skills are critical to the success of any organization, but more so during this time of crisis. Workplaces have been disrupted because of COVID-19 as more employees are working from home and dependent on technology—as are other family members. Communication is key during these times. Even if employees are beginning to return to the workplace, communication continues to be important. It’s better for managers to over-communicate with everyone on the team than to under-communicate.

A Challenge for 2020

Best places to work. These competitions abound on the national and on the local level.  They cause many people to stop and think: Are they really objective?  That’s often going to depend on the process, the judging criteria and the judges.  I was asked to serve as a judge last year in a best professional contest.  With some reluctance I said yes.  Reluctance turned to enthusiasm when I received the well-defined criteria and realized that being new to the community, I didn’t know any of the entrants.  I could be totally objective and judge them against the standards.  And my top candidate won. 

It’s great when employees feel there is something special about finding a job, a company, an organization where they genuinely enjoy going to work every day and even putting in extra hours sometimes.  Who do you want judging you as an employer – a panel of external judges or your employees? 

Consider the following excerpt from an Albuquerque Journal article that appeared on December 12, 2019 about a local, top workplaces competition.  Two of the questions in survey for the 2019 competition were:  How satisfied are you with your job? How satisfied are you with your organization?  Some of the rave reviews from employees surveyed among last year’s winners include:

• Decisions are made based on member impact and the bottom line is not the primary focus. People who work here are generally passionate about helping our members and our community.
• I have the ability to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives every day.
• Have never worked in a place that makes you feel so welcome and needed.
• I really enjoy coming to work because it’s a very positive environment to be in! I love what I do and enjoy learning new things, but especially spending time with the students because they are an important part of our community and our lives.
• This job allows me to work to my strengths. I am able to balance work and personal life with my work setting. I love the people that I work with, they are all supportive.
• Every day is different, challenging and exciting.
• I am able to do what I love and grow.
• I enjoy my co-workers, team work and making the job fun. I look forward to coming to work every day for another new adventure. Having management understand and support our team is a huge factor.
• Every person I have interacted with is so helpful and happy to help teach me something new. I have never felt discouraged or dreaded coming into work. I truly feel like I am making a difference in other’s lives even without presently meeting them face to face.

Here’s the challenge for 2020: Think of the accolades you want your employees to shower on you as an employer – or even as a manager. Then make it happen. Engage your team every work day during the coming year. Get some ideas on page 37 of The Manager’s Answer Book.