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“Any company trying to compete….must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee”         Jack Welch - former CEO of GE

With around 160 tools (levers) available to business (Corporate Leadership Council) – the most common challenge is:

• How do we keep our employees motivated and committed? and;

• Which lever do we pull and when?

While there are many ways to approach the “engaged employee” challenge we continue to like the principles espoused by “First, break all the rules” (Buckingham & Coffman).

In their book, they outline a useful pathway to ensure your employees can be “the best they can be” and in so doing, ensure business outcomes (increased overall value) are achieved.

“The Right People in the Right Roles with the Right Managers drive employee engagement”

At the entry point of the path (employment), the first steps must be performed almost perfectly or the remaining linkages to customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and profit will not occur. To do this, ensure your interviews identify individual competencies - their patterns of thought, feeling, or behaviour – as well as learned skills and acquired knowledge.

In step two, positioning that individual to perform a role which capitalizes on these strengths is imperative. No amount of coaching or motivation attempts work if these two steps fail.

Finding a way to engage

Buckingham and Coffman say the next step is the most critical – Finding a way to engage these talented employees.

Lower impact solutions like paying more; providing more incentives may deal with short-term needs however a more sustainable strategy is to select quality managers/ leaders and build an employment climate where they (the managers) can:

• select the best (right) people
• set accurate expectations for them
• motivate them
• develop them

If this occurs well – employee discretionary effort rises; an emotional commitment to the business grows and this value will be released into customer focused performance.

Companies that are unable to take this step and gain this level of emotional commitment will be forced off this path - they will lose more talented people than they can keep.

Those that “fall off” this path will have to revert to less robust routes for performance – an over reliance on marketing, an unquestioned fondness for acquisition, a frantic push for “bought” growth and while there may be a spike in value, in the end sustainable success will be under pressure.

Engaged Employees Drive Customer Loyalty

If you would like more information on the specific steps involved in driving employee engagement strategies while achieving dramatic improvement in bottom line results, please contact one of team at Crossroads.