Why Employee Engagement is Critical!

Employee Engagement Building Blocks

Gallop’s definition of an engaged employee “Works with passion and feels a profound connection to their company and they drive innovation and move the organization forward.”
But on average only 30% of employees fall into that category. 50% fall into the Not-Engaged group. Here is how not-engaged is described:
“Employees are essentially “checked out.” They’re sleepwalking through their workday and putting in time — but not energy or passion — into their work.” Just by the definition difference between the two you can feel the impact engaged employees would have compared to not-engaged.

What if you could double the number of engaged employees, from 30 % to 60%, what effect do you think that could have on how your customers feel about you and the impact on your bottom line?
Most businesses say “our employees are our most important asset”, but the reality is something different. How much time and effort is really spent on improving engagement – by increased training – by doing surveys to see how much their employees are actually engaged at work? Maybe business owners don’t really think they have much control over their employee engagement – i.e. you either hired a great employee or you didn’t – so there is not much I can do to improve the situation.

This is just not true, businesses can go from not having an engaging work place to a very engaged work place – with the same employees. All they have to do is decide that having a 30% engaged workforce is costing them customer satisfaction, time, unhappy employees, hire turnover, productivity, profit and causing lower quality and higher absenteeism.
Gallop also quantified some of the reasons you want highly engaged employees.
• Businesses in the top 25% of employee engagement do significantly better in productivity, profitability, and customer ratings than the companies in the bottom 25%.
• Companies with 9.3 engaged workers for every actively disengaged, experienced 147% higher earnings compared to competition. In contract, companies with 2.6 engaged workers for every actively disengaged worker experienced 2% lower earnings than the competition.

Do you believe these numbers? It’s pretty obvious that companies that have engaged employees would have superior productivity, profitability and customer ratings. Isn’t it just good business to work toward this?
It is more of an attitude shift of the owner than a hard cost to the business to get there. Next post we will get into how to have a highly engaged workforce – how to weave it into the fabric of how your business operates.

How engaged are your employees?

I Love my Job! I just need a little nap.

A recent Gallop study quantifies the bleak state of employee engagement at work. Only 30% of employees are engaged at work.

Do you know how engaged your employees are?  You are missing out on a lot of brain power and frankly improvement to your business bottom line if you don’t look it.

There are excellent  and time tested ways to double the engagement of your employees – and it isn’t weekend retreats or a ropes course – of which the benefits are short lived.

I will be discussing this more in-depth in a series of posts during April.

What Road is your Business on?

A thoughtful vision is powerful for setting the direction and providing the fuel for the growth of a business.  That is usually how a business gets started, someone has a “vision” for how they could provide this great product or service and they are off and running trying to make this vision happen.

Most of the time this vision doesn’t get written down and doesn’t get shared, at least not in-depth. This “vision” might just be collecting dust in the business owners mind. I want to encourage you to write it down, share it with your partners, friends and employees. Getting input from other stakeholders will help get their buy in and feel more like part of the team. If you going to take the time to do it you might as well do it well, which includes communicating it.

In addition, if a vision is important for the company as a whole, then shouldn’t developing a vision for each part of the company and each person (position) also be valuable? I think so!

If you have a vision of what success and excellence looks like for you and your business from the top to the bottom this will be like high octane fuel in the tank of the owner, managers and your hourly team members to execute the details of your plan.

Don’t underestimate the momentum of customers and friends taking hold of your vision and cheering you on. You want and need their perspective on where the company is going. If you are the only one bought into your vision, it will be like hiking five miles uphill in two feet of snow, both ways to school. It could be done, but why not have other people be part of creating the vision? Then it would be more like sledding downhill in the snow. This would be a lot easier and more fun, right?

Having a written vision goes a long way to help define goals and objects and with the type of people you hire to achieve that vision. Could you see having yourself and all team members be in their sweet spot?

Business and life sweet spot! Have your whole team hit their sweet spot and your customers will love you for it!

I like what Ari Weinzweig (co-owner of Zingerman’s) said “Having a vision of greatness in writing certainly doesn’t guarantee success, nor does not having a written vision mean you’re doomed to failure. But a vision sets us up to work together toward a shared, inspiring, attainable (if also challenging) positive picture of the future.”

Ari has written a more in-depth article about the “Power of Visioning” an 8 step approach at http://www.zingtrain.com/node/85 it is worth the quick read.

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John Franklin