5 steps to more effective employee engagement
- Luke Telford
- 9 February 2010
Photo credit: clix, sxc.hu
An unengaged member of staff is an uncommunicative member of staff. You need to engage staff effectively if they are to be responsive to how you address them. Here are some steps to achieving effective engagement.
1. Negativity doesn't help. Get rid of any negative perceptions you might be harbouring about your staff. You need to acknowledge that every staff member is a unique source of knowledge, and should be treated as someone who has valuable things to contribute to your business.
2. Learn how they define success for themselves. If you're familiar with how your staff formulate their ideas of success—both personally and as a professional in your company—then it should be easy to frame goals in such a way that they're both challenging and tantalising. How do you learn how they define success for themselves? Ask them.
3. Take an interest in their careers. Once you've established how they formulate their goals, take an interest in how they play out—both those you've set with them in your company and their own life/career based goals. If a staff member knows their employer is genuinely interested in their success, they will be more motivated and committed to exceeding expectations in their workplace.
4. Responsibilities. You've established their goals and have an interest in their career beyond the work they're doing for you; how do you continue to engage them? You allow your staff to grow and develop themselves within your workplace by providing them with extra responsibilities. Often a staff member's self-worth depends on how their value and output at work is perceived. More responsibilities, especially those which align with their interests and abilities and augment their skill-set, will improve their conception of themselves both as a capable professional and as an active and valuable part of your business.
5. Once you've revised your engagement strategy, don't abandon it. Modify, if need be, but if you take an active interest in staff one day, and just tell them to get on with it from behind a closed door the next, they're going to feel confused and abandoned. Maintain a constant dialogue with your staff about their goals and associated rewards. If they continue to be your employee, you need to continue to communicate with them. It's not that hard.
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