Employee Engagement – "it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine"

If there is one concept or theme that I am encountering over and over again with clients and perspective customers, it’s the idea of Employee Commitment.

At its core Employee Commitment is about gaining the hearts and minds of every person in the organisation so that there is “an environment where people feel motivated, appreciated and fulfilled.” The return for teams and companies is that they get more productive, more innovative and more adaptable employees.

In these times of zero promotional opportunities and pay cuts, it is even more of an imperative, as a leader, that you make sure your employees are not just turning up but are also turned on.

The good news is that pay rises and bonuses are not required to gain this level of commitment. The bad news is it takes time, focus, energy, patience and role modeling

But how do you go about building and retaining employee commitment?

For now, let me just list out a series of steps and initiatives that I have successfully used or witnessed within my clients – I will use subsequent blog postings to explain each in more detail:

- Creating the Vision, and then getting the management team behind it.

- Measure, Measure, Measure employee satisfaction

- Finding out peoples strengths and passions and leveraging these in their jobs

- “Inverting the pyramid” - supporting people to successfully drive initiatives

- Building the Dashbaord – you get what you measure

- Skip level meetings – “hearing and listening are not the same”

- Communicate, Communicate, communicate and …..communicate.

Finally, all this talk about employee engagement got me thinking about the work I do for clients – coaching leaders and high potentials, working with teams, delivering training and helping drive cultural change.

And it struck me – all the work I do is about one thing – its all about Employee Commitment.

Let me know your thoughts, questions or insults.

Colm