How to get the employee engaged.

In a business institution or any other business organizational firm that is successful have their employees engaged; people are your resources. People at work who are engaged are people who are motivated and productive; they become your business ambassador.

Last 2 months I’ve been struggling to understand the team need and what should we do to get them engaged. So I came up with some ideas that it may help or it may not but it worth it to think about.

- Tell them where the business or our department is heading: people need to understand the business vision, what is required of them. How can you expect your employees to achieve anything, if they do not know what is the end game, what they are aiming for.

- Do not just be a manager, be a leader (a role model): You do not give them order, you encourage them to make decisions. You are one team. If you want your employees to respect, you should role model the behavior. You want your people to say 'hello' and 'thank you', so when you see them say hello and thank you.

- Each employee is an individual being, be human and respect them. Embrace the fact that everyone has a different character, different skills and strength. Learn what ticks their boxes.

If we want to know what our employees they are, we should put in place a value survey (ask them what they think our business values/culture are). If they are not what we meant them to be, we will need to review them. Business values summarize how we want your firm to be perceived by our customer, supplier and employees.

One important point is to implement means of communication that are both ways in our day to day routine. Think about what we can do to make our employees more engaged.

To illustrate this I will give an example on an engagement was degrading and the explanation why.

In our operation, people making the dough work all day long. At first, one of the newly bosses was arriving with a great smile, saying hello to everyone, coming during the maintenance windows to support the night shift, and when there was a problem he was the first one there to support and help sort out the issues. People were happy to work, no complaint, the work were tasty. After a while the recession lasting, the operation was having more business demands, the new promoted boss became stressed but did not mention it to anyone. The mood swung in the office to discomfort, people felt scrutinized. Some people were laid off immediately with no explanation. People started to take sick leave, the “dough” had turned, no one were not happy. Work started plummeting. If the boss had been open with the situation and had a clear communication about what was happening the employees would have better understood and not lost their engagement.

This is a learning curve on not losing the momentum and not drop back the employees. They are the soldiers that we defend with and they are the defenders that we could win with.

Cheers for the team…