by Tom Hinton
It’s no coincidence that most of the best-in-class
companies also have fiercely loyal and dedicated workforces. When
top-performing CEOs from companies like Apple, Amazon, Southwest, Starbucks and
Berkshire Hathaway talk about why their companies are most admired, they always
cite their people and, specifically, employee
engagement as one of the keys to their profitability and success.
What exactly is Employee
Engagement? I define it as a person’s
emotional connection to their company. Twenty years ago, it was enough to
merely pay your employees a fair wage and provide good working conditions.
Today, however, things have changed in the workplace. Your best and brightest
employees have choices. They won’t settle for the status quo. This is why your
company and its management team must challenge employees with meaningful goals
and assignments. Leaders must set the bar high with a corporate visions that
inspire employees and tasks them to help customers use the company’s products
and services to make the world a better place. This is how the era of Employee
Engagement is defined.
How can your company or organization successfully
engage its employees? Having learned by trial and error over the past 15 years,
here are three keys steps we recommend and use effectively with our clients at
CRI Global, LLC.
1. Take the Pulse of your Workforce.
There’s no point in running a race if you don’t know where the starting point
and finish line are, right? So, it’s imperative that you assess how your
employees are feeling about their company, their work, and their ability to
contribute to its success in meaningful ways. We always conduct an in-depth
assessment that includes a cross-section of employees as all levels of the
company. What we learn is invaluable and helps leaders chart their course for
innovation, improvement and implementing a strategy for long-term growth and
customer loyalty.
2. Fix What Doesn’t Work and Fix it Fast! Once you’ve completed the assessment phase,
you will know exactly what is working and what is broken in your organization. Trust
me, your employees will tell you. The next step is to challenge your management
team to fix it – and fix it fast! The key here is to demonstrate forward
progress. Don’t be surprised if your management team resists. Most managers are
not visionaries and they are comfortable with the status quo. So, be prepared
to kick a few butts and shake things up in order to demonstrate you mean
business! Effective leaders understand the status quo is a fatal flaw in any
organization. This step requires courage
and conviction.
If your company has been stuck in
neutral for some time, your employees will be favorably impressed by any
significant action you take to implement positive changes that help them do a
better job and get better results. This is why it’s important to prioritize the
things that you need to fix, change or improve within each department and
business unit. Basically, you have 90 days to act if you want to have any
credibility as a leader. People will
embrace your new vision, but only if they see actions after words. Remember the words of Ray Kroc, who put
McDonald’s on the global map. Kroc said, “People are like bananas. They’re
either green and ripening or yellow and rotting!” You always need to keep your
people greening.
3. Set the Bar High. Most companies under-challenge their
employees. As a leader, you need to set the bar high by inspiring your people
with a vision that challenges them to be the best. This means soliciting their
ideas, asking them to make a commitment to be the best, and incentivizing them
to reach that bar. Then, you need to give them the tools and resources
necessary to accomplish that vision. Finally, as the leader, you must always be
the “voice of success” and be relentless in your pursuit of your vision. This
is how you convert followers into believers, and believers into evangelists.
As your employees make progress and
achieve various levels of success, be sure to reward and recognize them. Salute
and praise your top performers in each department. Invite them to share their
success stories with others in the company including other divisions. Create a
culture of “success and celebration” within your organization that motivates
your employees to raise their performance levels and inspires them to set the
bar even higher while achieving new records for sales, productivity, innovation
and cost savings.
This is the stuff success is made
of. This is how good companies become great, and great companies become
legendary. Employee Engagement is a key part of every company’s success
formula.
About
the Author:
Tom Hinton is president of CRI Global, LLC, a firm that helps its
clients create a High Performance Workplace™.
Tom is a popular speaker and the author of four books including 10,000 Days: The Rest of Your Life, the Best
of Your Life! For more information, visit: www.tomhinton.com
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