As I said in my last post, I have been running across a lot of material on employee engagement lately. The best definition I can find for employment engagement is this:
An “engaged employee” is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization’s interests (Wikipedia)
The more I have seen on this topic, the more I have realized how much our organization needs to improve. That means there are likely others of you thinking the same thing.
Must Start At The Top
Obviously, that improvement has to start at the top if it is going to be successful. This is not because I am the best person for the project, but because if my support is not behind it, then it will not last.
Follow Along With My Action Plan
As a result of this realization, I have taken the various sources of the material I have seen or heard and I have condensed into a fairly simple action plan that I am going to follow over the next several months.
Rather than waiting until I go through the whole process before I report to you, I am instead going to tell you about my action plan ahead of time. This way, you can hear about the progress as it happens.
You will hear about the wins and losses, the good, the bad, and the ugly! Hopefully, this process will help you implement similar employee engagement efforts in your own business.
In this step, the goal is to educate the employees about the need for good, honest communication between them and the ownership of the company. Without this preparation, any efforts to improve the workplace will most likely be misdirected and ineffective.
Setting the Stage
This past Friday, I went ahead and took the first step in my plan. In this step, I set the stage for the upcoming focus I will be putting on employee engagement in our organization. As I normally do every month, I went to each of our eleven departments over the course of a couple of days to give a devotional.
Simple Story For Illustration
I started with a simple story about a church that wanted to help a missionary in India. After, collecting hundreds of bedsheets, the church congregation spent hours and hours tearing the bedsheets into thin strips to be used as bandages. They then shipped the bandages to the missionary to give out.
When the missionary in India presented the bandages to his people in India, one of the ladies held up a strip and exclaimed, “If we sow these strips together, we can have some really nice bedsheets!”
Inviting Participation
I asked the group, “Who was at fault?” Without hesitation, everyone agreed the pastor should have asked for specific needs rather than assuming a need for bandages.
We talked about when we make an effort to help others, we cannot just assume we know what they need. We must ask them what they need. We also have to make it easy (and safe) for them to tell us.
Adding A Twist
Next, I added one fact to the story that I had intentionally left out the first time I told it. I went on to tell them that the church pastor had in fact asked the missionary how his church could specifically help his people in India. Instead of offering suggestions, the missionary simply told the pastor that anything he and his church decided to give would be fine with those in India. He said he was just thankful for the help.
I asked, “Now, who is at fault?” Of course they all agreed that the missionary was now the one at fault. We discussed how it was unfair for the missionary to give so little information about the specific needs of his people when asked. We all agreed that if he had simply asked for bedsheets, he would have saved a lot of time and frustration on both sides.
Parallels to Employee Engagement
From there, I went on to draw the parallels to our organization. I explained that I would be coming around to their departments over the next several weeks to solicit some feedback from them on improving their workplace environment.
I explained how critical it will be for them to give me straight and honest feedback. I pointed back to the wasted time spent tearing and then sowing the bedsheets. If they were truly interested in an improved workplace, then it would be essential that they give thoughtful suggestions and ideas. I emphasized how their willingness to participate would determine the success of our efforts.
In my next post, I will outline my plan for the face-to-face meetings throughout the organization. Stay tuned!
Have you seen the benefits of employee engagement?
What have you done to improve it?
What more could you do?
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