What does employee engagement mean to your company? Part 2

 

In the introductory blog for this series, I asked the question about how your company might look at employee engagement, perhaps citing a safety team or a social committee as good examples.  I hope that you have been able to think about how your business believes they are implementing employee engagement and how effective it really is.

Today we are going to explore some of the strategies that you can use in your engagement plan to ensure that your team is being effectively involved in the business and that it is sustainable over time.

One of the first things that I do when I am focusing on involving the entire employee team is to find a compelling need to get everyone involved.  If you believe that you can just wave a magic wand and proclaim "You are now empowered.  Go forth and make things happen." then I guarantee that you will not be successful.  If, however, you are able to clearly communicate what the company's goals are, where the company is going, and the expectation that every single person's efforts are needed to make it successful, then employees have a "rally cry."  They understand why you are asking something different of them, from yesterday.  Putting the time in to ensuring that your business has clear objectives, those that your leadership team is aligned to, then communicating them across the business in a passionate, enthusiastic, and confident manner to get the employees excited about change, is the first step in employee engagement.  

Employees also need to know how their individual roles contribute toward the ultimate goal.  Don't make the goals so obscure that employees can't relate to them.  Don't make the goals so specific that only one business function is really responsible for meeting that goal.  Don't use acronyms or business terms that employees don't understand.  Every employee should be able to recite the company's goals, and be able to communicate how they, as team members, are a part of that plan.  You may think that it is impossible to come up with goals that each business function is responsible for.  That is not true - let's look at an example.  If your manufacturing company's goal is to increase sales by 30% year-over-year, you may believe that only the sales team has responsibility for that.  However, the procurement team is responsible for identifying raw materials in the right quantities and at the right time.  The operations team is responsible for producing the products efficiently, increasing yield and maintaining quality.  The human resource team is responsible for hiring the right people for the roles and helping to retain those trained employees.  The R&D team may be responsible for developing new products to meet the needs of a new customer demographic.  The warehouse and logistics team must have a plan to store and ship more finished product to new customers.  There are loads of other examples here, and not just for manufacturing companies.  This concept applies across all sectors and all types of businesses.  Think of the goals for your own company.  Are they clear?  Does everyone know what they are?  Does everyone feel responsible for them?  

It is often assumed that the goals for companies "are what they are."  However this fundamental tool is absolutely necessary to have in place BEFORE you initiate employee engagement.  People will not sign up to do more, if they don't understand what and why.  

In this multi-part series, we will continue to explore how to develop a key employee engagement strategy, which tools to use to make that strategy successful, and how to sustain it as part of an integrated culture.