Employee Engagement Archive

It is when we utilise the results of the Employee Engagement survey we improve our culture and our engagement scores.

Motivational posters, beautiful videos set to popular songs and lapel pins can be a small part of a multi-layered change strategy, but on their own they are more likely to increase disengagement.

Effective and Emotionally Intelligent performance management drives behaviours that increase engagement, embed these behaviours in the organisation's culture all in alignment with the organisation's strategic goals.

The right organisational change model can make all the difference when implementing Employee Engagement or culture change within an organisation.

Unfortunately the success rate of major change initiatives is only just over 50%. The biggest obstacles to change management are poor communication and a lack of stakeholder buy-in.

Follow up and follow through are essential to successful engagement and culture change. Many employees are tired of hearing that they are important, they want action!

Do you feel like people sometimes don’t listen to you at work? We’re all guilty of not listening at one point or another in our lives. We tune others out while we’re busy, concentrating on a task or when we are reading. Though we try hard to multi-task between tasks we are not always able to listen to someone who’s trying to talk to …

Gallup has identified a strong statistically significant link between levels of employee engagement, leadership effectiveness, and organisational success. The quality of the relationship with an employee’s immediate manager was found to still be the most powerful determining factor of employee engagement.

Effective Engaged leaders use every touchpoint, opportunity and a variety of communication channels to reinforce and recognise the organisation's commitment to employee engagement and building and engaged innovative people-centric culture. An Employee Engagement survey is a good start but requires action to be effective.

Engagement, similar to discretionary behaviour, is brought to the table by employees, not something done to them. A key driver of employee engagement is the employee's sense of feeling valued and involved.

Organisations can optimise their business results when their employees are fully engaged, have the opportunity to be more creative, and their interests are aligned with business outcomes. As employers we need to strive to build an environment in which employees feel they can exercise their voice and that their contributions matter.

Research suggests that workplaces with a solid organisational culture and positive work environment have a higher rate of employee satisfaction, Building Employee Engagement, productivity, employee retention as well as better financial results.

The 5 core Emotional Intelligence Skills in business – The X-Factor for Employee Engagement and success Business is all about relationships. Emotional Intelligence skills help increase Engagement (internal relationships) and build better customer relationships (external relationships). Perceiving – This is our ability to be aware of and understand our emotional state, as well as the emotional states of others.  It is about being aware of emotional signals and being able to accurately identify …

A culture audit uncovers vital information about the health of your organisation.

Discretionary effort is fuelled by our passion and is linked to our willingness to go the “extra mile” beyond the letter of our job description.

Strategy communication tips: How do you share a strategy effectively within your organisation? These Effective strategy communication tips can help persuade employees of the importance and relevance of their company’s purpose (why we exist), and strategic goals (what we are going to do). These communication strategies will help you more effectively reach your employees, and gain buy-in that advances your strategy and improves your results. …

In today’s highly competitive economy, building a Great place to work is one of the greatest competitive strengths we can have.

Are you acknowledging and rewarding the right attitudes and behaviours to build an Emotionally Intelligent attitude? What gets measured and acknowledged in your organisation gets repeated.

The most effective managers and leaders strategically align their employee engagement efforts and communicate these ideas though their actions daily.

Many books talk about the “sandwich” feedback technique, starting and ending with a compliment. This is generally very poorly received as the compliments are often a last minute platitude.

Performance conversations are often not handled well in many organisations. Most of us don't like to be told what to do and we sometimes do the opposite of what we are told, even when the information would be helpful. Learning to hear and act on feedback is a skill we all need to learn in order to keep growing and developing skills.

Nobody wants their time wasted by attending an unproductive meeting. Meetings can eat up days of productive time if inefficiently planned and run. An effective meeting helps you achieve a desired outcome within a specific timeframe and follows up on what was decided.

Happiness benefits: Does your organisation pay lip service to the idea that “people are our greatest asset” or do they do something about it? Unfortunately in practice in many organisations short-term money decisions often trump people decisions, no matter how much they pay lip service to the idea that people are their most important asset. Luckily positive psychology research is changing the conversations around employee …

The conversations about building purposeful work is rapidly evolving with the emergence of new research focused on happiness and meaningful work (positive psychology). Similar to technology, purpose has become a business imperative to keep up with fast paced change.

To improve our mental health and our ability to combat stress, it is important to surround ourselves with at least a few good friends and confidants. Social support helps reduce stress and build Employee Engagement in your team.

Numerous studies have shown the positive effects of laughter on our physical and mental health. Happiness comes from being in the moment while constantly striving for perfection practically guarantees that we’ll be unhappy.

The Leadership lessons from legos are that doing meaningful work is rewarding in itself, and we are more willing to do more work for less pay when we feel our work has some sort of purpose (even if it is minuscule).

Build an attitude of gratitude into your workplace. Experiments by psychologists Grant and Gino found that a simple “thank you” from a manager gave people a strong sense of both self-worth and self-efficacy.

Many think that success leads to happiness, but research shows our brains work the opposite way round. Here are seven tips to increase our levels of positivity.

We tend to judge others by their actions, and ourselves by our intent. Strive for balance, look for the intent behind other’s actions and ensure our actions are clear.

Cognitive-dissonance is only one of many biases that impact our relationships and colour our experience of life every day. We don’t like to believe that we could be wrong, so some of us may limit our intake of new information or avoid new ways of thinking that don’t fit in with our pre-existing beliefs. Psychologists call this the “confirmation bias.”

The Benjamin Franklin Effect shows we grow to like people for whom we do nice things building social support with others.

Our brains love personal and emotionally compelling stories; they engage more of our brains and therefore are easier to remember than a set of facts.

Using our attentional spotlight is energetically costly so we need to use it sparingly. The functions using the pre-frontal cortex of our brains require considerably more resources than we sometimes realise.

Research has found that willpower is a limited form of mental energy that runs out as we use it. Unfortunately these depleting events are all too common in our daily lives.

The best approach to the GROW model is to remember that as a peer coach we are not necessarily an expert in the other person’s challenges. The model requires us to act as a facilitator, helping the mentee/coachee reflect and select the best options for them.

Emotional Intelligence: A vital skill for leaders is to become more self-aware, and to be able to recognise their (and other’s) emotions as they happen. Effective leaders learn to perceive emotions as they come up in response to an action or situation.

Imagine coming to work each day and being surrounded by team members who truly want to do a great job in everything they do. We can’t motivate someone else, motivation comes from within, however we can inspire motivation and create an environment in which motivation thrives.

Research shows that external rewards (and punishment) can be effective for algorithmic tasks, but they can have a devastating impact on heuristic tasks. Intrinsic motivators involve engaging in a behaviour because it is personally rewarding and normally involve heuristic tasks.

Research shows that part of resilience is how you appraise the situation. Do you see the situation as a challenge or a threat?

Flow is the mental state of in which we perform an activity while fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment. Daniel Pink focuses on self-actualisation as the key to employee motivation. Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that motivation flows from the more demanding lower survival levels to the higher aspirational levels. Pink suggests self-actualisation be divided into driving motives of …

As emotional beings dealing with upset or disappointed customers can be challenging. Follow this step by step process to deal with difficult customers.

A clear strategic communication plan needs to be sculpted for the needs of each audience in order to communicate clearly and effectively.

Relationship management is using your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully Relationship management involves clear communication and effective handling of conflict. It is the bond you build with others over time.  You need to be able to see the benefit of connecting with many different people, even those you are not so fond of.  Solid relationships are something that should …

Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on other people’s emotions and understand what is really going on with them This means noticing how other people are feeling even if you don’t feel the same way.  It’s easy to get caught up in your own emotions and forget to consider the perspective of the other person.  Listening and observing are the most important elements …

Self-management is your ability to act or not act It is entirely dependent on your self-awareness and it is the ability to use your awareness to stay flexible and direct your behaviour positively.  Some emotions create such paralysing fear or cloudy thinking that no reaction seems clear. Self-management is so much more than resisting explosive or problematic behaviour.  The biggest challenge people usually face is managing …

Self-awareness is about understanding what makes you tick Self-awareness is your ability to accurately notice your own emotions in the moment and understand your typical reactions.  Becoming more self-aware requires a willingness to focus on feelings that may be negative.  You need to spend time thinking about where your feelings come from and why they are there; it is about understanding what makes you tick.   …

Listening is not always easy. Be in the moment. In order to be a successful listener we must be physically and mentally present.

Friction between you and a difficult customer is often made worse by how you interpret their behaviour. Get the full picture. Additionally although the customer's anger may seem to be directed at you, you are just the person they are venting to and don't take it too personally.

Keep your emails brief and focused on just one topic, this makes them more productive. Lengthy emails with multiple requests, too much information or multiple objectives hidden in the body of the text take longer to handle, are tougher to archive properly and can prove difficult to forward.

A communication strategy can be prepared for a variety of internal and external communication scenarios When creating a communications strategy it is important to remember that it is not a one-time project. If the communication in an organisation is unclear it can lead to confusion, disengagement and poor delivery.As the environment and role players change the communications strategy needs to be re-evaluated to fit the …

Communication that is clear and understood saves time and money, improves customer scores, and helps increase employee engagement levels.

How accurate is the communication participants receive? Is the information accurate and available when required, or is there a lack of information and satisfaction with the communication available?

The facilitator must be open to ideas and thoughts from the focus group members, and not just concentrate on trying to get answers to pre-set questions or find the “proof” for theories. The facilitator should be willing to explore deeper than the surface answers offer.

A communications strategy is the tool that helps support the organisation's strategy for customers, employees and partners. It is the who, what, why, when, where and how of effective communication.

Change can be scary and adapting to change is often complex and messy. Tasks are easy to list, but behaviour and long-held habits are not always so easy to change.

Keep your message clear and simple. Develop a checklist of what needs to be communicated, to whom and when. Set clear objectives and assess whether you have met them.

In a fast moving multimedia world we need to ensure our communication is effective and clear.

The ability to engage and retain valuable employees and their intrinsic knowledge has a significant impact on an organisation's bottom line. The attitude and actions of an employee's immediate manager can help enhance employee engagement or can sour the relationship and lead to employee disengagement and loss of key talent.

Employees that are engaged become more productive and efficient, positively affecting the company’s bottom line.

In a fast moving multimedia world we need to ensure our communication is effective and clear. The aim is to discover what is working, what needs adjustment and what needs to be changed.

A Mentoring Programme can be difficult to implement but have numerous benefits to the individual and the organisation. Benefits of developing a Mentoring Programme: Help with on-boarding: Mentoring can help smooth the process of bringing new employees up to speed, and help redeploy existing employees in a new area of the organisation. Studies by Gallup show that the first few weeks of an employee’s new position is critical to …

To create an effective mentorship programme certain essential elements are necessary. To avoid ineffective mentorship programmes be aware of these key elements, they can be warning signs of failure. 1. Training A mentoring relationship requires training to be effective. Without any training less than 1 in 3 programmes (30%) deliver significant results for the participants (or the organisation). By training mentors you raise the success rate to …

What are the qualities of a great Mentor? Mentorship is becoming an essential element of dynamic innovative business. It helps develop talent and with Knowledge Management – sharing intrinsic knowledge. 1. Demonstrate integrity Great mentors have credibility and live their own advice, they walk their talk. It doesn’t mean they have all the answers, but it does mean they act as a positive role model. Good …

Mentorship programmes need to be aligned with the strategic goals of the organisation. The purpose of the relationship is to develop the protégé not only for the current job, but also for the future.

The key discoveries from neuroscience that impact Performance feedback and employee engagement. Our ability to make decisions, solve problems and collaborate with others, is often directly impacted by our responses to threats. When we learn to manage these threat responses we are able to increase engagement.

Leadership means we are always on stage “What you do teaches faster, and has a lasting impression, far beyond what you say.” T.F. Hodge Part of our job, as leaders, is to inspire the people around us to step up, and go the extra mile. To accomplish this we must demonstrate best practice, by doing what we tell others to do. It doesn’t matter whether we are …