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