BY ZAC WILCOX – DIRECTOR OF ORGANIZATION HEALTH CONSULTING
There have been countless studies and articles written about the importance of employee engagement and how it directly impacts productivity, morale, and retention rates — and through those — a direct impact on the bottom line.
Employee engagement is a complex issue, but despite its complexity, the solution is simple. As is the case with most problems, a complex issue does not require a complex solution; the opposite is usually the case.
There are a lot of different ways to talk about employee engagement, but I believe that there are three simple things that we can do to drastically increase the engagement of our teams and employees. These three things are very simple and outlined expertly in Patrick Lencioni’s book “The Truth About Employee Engagement.”
First is addressing anonymity. Our employees need to feel known as people and individuals — not just for what they provide and do at work, but for who they are outside of work.
What are their hobbies and aspirations? What are their families like? What interesting life experiences have they had?
Feeling anonymous at work is a killer. We are the same people at home and at work. We bring our whole selves to work with us, and if we feel like our bosses don’t know who we are, it is a significant drain on our energy and engagement.
Second is addressing irrelevance. Our employees need to know why their job matters. We all want to make a difference in the world, and if we don’t think we are making a difference, then that is a significant drain on our energy and engagement. (Yes, there is a trend here!)
It IS also your job, as the boss, to make sure that your employees know why their job matters. You must remind them over and over again why what they are doing is important. The difference might be small but important. A dishwasher at a restaurant, for instance, is essentially keeping that restaurant going. Without clean dishes, they won’t be able to cook or serve food. The dishwasher needs to be reminded of how important their job is.
Third is addressing immeasurement. It’s a word that Lencioni created to describe the idea that our employees need to know how to measure their success on a daily basis.
I have worked in several jobs where I got home at the end of the day and my wife asked me ‘How was work?’ and I didn’t really have an answer. I didn’t know if I had done a good job or not. I know that I worked hard, but I didn’t have a good way to measure my success, and my boss hadn’t told me anything.
To use the above example: did the dishes get washed in time? Did the cooks have all the pots, pans, and utensils they needed? Did servers ever have to bring back dishes that still had food on them? Were the bussers slowed down by a pile of unclean dishes?
If we are going to get the best out of our employees, then we, as bosses and leaders, need to make sure that we are giving them what they need. The onus is on us as leaders to make sure that we have engaged employees; it is not on our employees’ job to be engaged. It’s also, as I said at the beginning, very simple. Simple, though, does not mean easy. It takes a lot of discipline and consistency to be able to address these three key factors of employee engagement.
This blog is just one part of the H.E.A.R.T series. To read the rest of the series, please visit our website or click on one below.
