Create Engagement Through Involvement

In our last few blogs, we’ve been talking about the concept of employee engagement and how valuable it can be to your organization. If you think back to your early years on the job, you were likely highly engaged, at least when you started out. You were eager to jump into the work, anxious to impress your new boss, and wanted to fit in with the other employees. The question becomes, how long did that eagerness last? How long was it before you realized that your eagerness was not truly appreciated by your boss or by your coworkers? How long until you placed more value on blending in than on being the best?

From my personal experience I believe that for most people disengagement, the art of not caring about your job or your company, is a learned behavior. When we first start working we really want to care, but we learn from our boss and our peers that this trait, this eagerness, is not truly appreciated in the workplace. Over time, we begin to accept this as the truth and incorporate it into our daily behaviors.

The same is true for your employees. They likely learned fairly early in their careers that the best way to get along was to go along.

Here’s the good news.

Since disengagement is a learned behavior it can be unlearned as well. The trick is in how you “teach” your employees that it is ok to be engaged.

The process of integrating engagement into your organization requires a significant amount of work for you and your leadership team. And, it starts with honesty about what you are trying to accomplish and why. You will need to build trust with your team and give them a reason to believe in you and what you are saying. To engage your team, you need to be fully committed to the concept of employee engagement. You need to be willing to encourage and accept their ideas and suggestions, be open in your communication about what is and what is not working, and, most importantly, you need to convince them that this idea is not the “leadership fad of the month” but a concept that is here for the long term.

Here is my suggestion for getting the engagement ball rolling in your organization. Start by identifying the biggest challenge that you are facing. Then, call a meeting of key people who are involved in this challenge and who should most want to see it solved. Once that team is assembled, explain the problem to them and ask them how they would solve this problem.

Isn’t that easy?

Here comes the hard part.

As the group begins to provide comments or give feedback, you need to encourage them to tell you more. You want them to believe that it is ok to be open and that their thoughts are welcome. That means putting aside your natural tendency to critique their ideas and, instead, encouraging them to expound on them. Focus on what IS possible from their suggestions and not the pitfalls. Encourage them to build upon each other’s ideas so that they build a solution together.

And then you have to implement their solution.

I told you it wouldn’t be easy.

We’ll talk more about how to build your engaged organization in future issues.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:

•Your Company Culture
•The Leadership Styles of your key managers
•The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com

There Is a Better Way to Manage Your Employees

In the last few blogs, I’ve been talking about employee engagement and how valuable engaged employees can be to your organization. Study after study demonstrates how engaged employees work both harder and smarter. They provide better customer service and enhance customer satisfaction. They add directly to the bottom line through increased productivity and the reduced costs of employee turnover. Yet, these same studies show that less than one-third of US employees are fully engaged and nearly 20% are actively disengaged. The remainder are marginally engaged, but could be more fully engaged…if only someone would engage them.

For decades the belief has been that the best way to get production from your team was through the “carrot and stick” approach. People were offered a carrot to produce and if that didn’t work, we hit them with a stick. Motivation was seen as offering rewards for performance or threatening people with the loss of their jobs. Often, successful executives specialized in rants and tirades; the louder and more colorful, the better. Intimidation of employees was common and thought to be a way to gain respect. And, of course, these methods of motivation will often produce short term results.

But we are in business for the long term.

Studies of motivation, employee engagement, and emotional intelligence have proven that there are better ways to lead your team. People are inherently good and creative and are willing to work hard for what they believe in. When properly encouraged, they are anxious to demonstrate what they are capable of doing and will also work well with others.

At this point you might be thinking to yourself, “What has this guy been smoking? I’ve been leading people for years and they simply aren’t motivated. In fact, they seem to do as little as possible, usually just enough to avoid getting fired. I can’t trust them and I certainly can’t expect this team to work together unless I literally force teamwork on them.”

Unfortunately, this thought process is way too common in our world today. And it’s not that you are wrong for thinking this. It’s just that your team has developed the traits of disengagement over a long period of time; possibly before they even came to work for you. Changing their attitude and getting your team engaged is no easy task. It requires a lot of dedication and hard work on your part to change not only your perceptions of what they are capable of, but also their perceptions of what you are trying to accomplish.

Is it worth the effort?

The statistics alone make it worth while to invest in yourself and your team to try and raise their level of engagement. Even more importantly is the fact that it is just easier and more fun to lead a team of engaged employees than it is to lead a team of disengaged employees. When your team is engaged they work harder without you having to push them. They are more creative without all of the ideas having to come from you. They treat your customers better, meaning that you get more repeat business. And, you have more time to spend doing the things you want to do versus the things you believe you have to do.

We’ll talk a little bit about this transition and how to create an engaged team in upcoming segments.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:

•Your Company Culture
•The Leadership Styles of your key managers
•The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com

Is There a Better Way?

In last week’s blog, I spoke a little about the concept of Employee Engagement and about the benefits to an organization when the employees are engaged. Report after report demonstrates improved productivity and profitability for engaged organizations as engaged employees care more about their work, their customer, and their company than non-engaged employees do. The case for Employee Engagement is really quite logical and simple. If the employees care about what they are doing, then they will work harder than if they don’t care. Employees that care will take better care of customers than those that don’t care. And, employees that like their jobs and like their companies will stay with them longer, making them more valuable to the companies. Not to mention the significant savings that result from lower employee turnover and higher levels of institutional knowledge.

As I look back at my own career, I’ve had a number of interesting jobs in different organizations. In my first job I discovered that errors of any type were not tolerated. The smallest mistake was often highlighted and punishment, while not always swift, was certainly sure. That job taught me not to make mistakes. Of course, it also taught me not to take chances. And the best way to not take any chances was never to change anything that you did. Hence, each day became a repeat of the day before it. With my fertile mind I always had a lot of ideas on how we could do things differently and better. This job taught me to suppress those ideas lest they lead to change and the possibility of error. Boredom and disengagement go hand in hand, and I was both. I did what I had to do, but not a lick more. And it’s safe to say that all of my coworkers believed the same as I did. Collectively, we were prime examples of what it means to be disengaged.

Bored, tired, doing as little as humanly possible.

But I could not suppress my creativity and yearn for excitement for long, and soon I found myself with a new employer. The atmosphere at my second job was decidedly different. I was only on the job for a few days when I learned my new boss’s favorite mantra: “Is there a better way?”

That phrase was like music to my ears. It excited every creative bone in my body and made me want to think of new ways to accomplish the job. I was part of a group of about 30 – 40 people and each day we would look at our work and ask, “Is there a better way?” At this time I was working in retail accounting for a shoe company. We had 300 plus stores scattered across the country and every day they had to report to us their sales numbers, key inventory information, hours used, and a variety of other information from their remote locations. Tracking it all was a challenge to say the least.

“Is there a better way?”

The energy in that organization was palpable. Mind you, we didn’t change things every day, but we were alert for signs of how to do things better. We knew that we were being paid to think and not just crank out numbers.

I was in my office one day when one of my employees came in to visit me.

“I was thinking about how we capture and report the sales by department,” she said. “I visited our store in Chapel Hill last night and watched them work for about an hour. It gave me an idea, so I spoke to both the department manager and store manager about it.” With that, she handed me a 5 page report that she had typed at home outlining a new process for our stores. She was clearly enthused about her idea and had worked at home the night before to complete this proposal.

It was brilliant. It was groundbreaking. It was the kind of idea that was going to save us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“There is” she said, “a better way.”

Yes, there is. When you have an employee who is that engaged.

What I failed to mention here about this wonderful, enthusiastic, and engaged employee was her rank in the organization. She was an Inventory Control Clerk. She made .10 per hour above minimum wage.

You see, when it comes to managing your employees, there is a better way.

But, I’ll have more about that in next week’s blog.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
•Your Company Culture
•The Leadership Styles of your key managers
•The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

What is Employee Engagement?

With the recent publication of our Amazon Best Seller, “The Engaged Manager: Make your team a success, and they’ll make you a success”, we’ve had a lot of questions about the importance of employee engagement and the role that an engaged manager plays in the organization.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the concept of Employee Engagement, the simple definition is, “the level of personal and professional commitment an individual has to the values and mission of the organization.” In other words, as an employee, how much do I believe in what we are doing and how far am I willing to go to ensure our success. An engaged employee believes in and is excited by the mission and values of the organization. And their commitment to the mission and values of the organization manifests itself on a daily basis through improved productivity, decreased absenteeism, and improved customer service and satisfaction.

There has been a significant amount of statistical analysis on employee engagement over the last 10 years. One recent study done by Hewitt Associates found that high-engagement firms had a total shareholder return that was 19% higher than average. Likewise, a company with low-engagement actually had a total shareholder return that was 44% below average.

Watson Wyatt reported that organizations with a high level of employee engagement out performed low engagement organizations by numbers ranging from 47% to 200%. These are just 2 examples gleaned from recent reports on employee engagement. New material is being released on a monthly basis by a variety of firms involved in statistical analysis that further enhance and refine these numbers. Clearly there is a statistical correlation between highly engaged employees and improved productivity.

But, there is also a correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. And my guess is that you have experienced that situation first hand and don’t need any data analysis to prove it to you.

What am I talking about?

We’ve all had the experience in a store, an office, or over the phone where we have encountered an employee who was disengaged from the job and company. They were clearly bored with what they were doing, it was clear that our question or phone call had deeply disturbed their ongoing process of doing nothing, and they really didn’t know or care how they might be of service to us as a customer. Whether their management wants to acknowledge it or not, this person is highly disengaged from their job but is also our primary contact into their organization. What we think about this company is directly impacted by our contact by this employee, yet here they are bored to tears, doing anything but working, and fundamentally chasing customers away.

And the question becomes, why are they working there? Why hasn’t the management replaced them with someone more competent and enthusiastic? And what would it take for me to want to do business with this company again?

We will talk more about these topics in upcoming entries.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
•Your Company Culture
•The Leadership Styles of your key managers
•The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/