Steps Leaders Can Take To Improve Employee Engagement

With an understanding of how impactful this profitability killer really is to our organizations, it’s time we look at the specific steps we can take as leaders to drive employee engagement and eliminate the costs of a disengaged workforce! Make no mistake here, the improvement in productivity that’s said to come from increased engagement is just one of the areas we’ll capture profit… I’m so convinced that employee engagement ties directly to attracting and retaining great team members that we built a lesson called How to Make Sure Working for You Doesn’t Suck into our Recruitment, Retention, & Culture course for leaders at all levels of their organizations. As I shared before, I believe it’s in every leader’s best interest to have simple processes in place to earn buy-in and engagement from our teams in every interaction we have with them, as a group and individually.

In trying to find the 3 C’s of employee engagement in the Forbes article I mentioned previously, here are the eight things the author suggested leaders do through their “clear, consistent communication”:

• Be transparent
• Be a good listener
• Be the energy you want to see
• Be humble
• Understand your team’s “why”
• Promote personal growth
• Celebrate small victories
• Never stop learning

I’ll say it once more so there’s no misunderstanding my point: I’m not knocking any one of these things. I’d argue that all of them are absolutely critical for anyone in a leadership role, but I could also make a strong case showing that they each need to be very targeted to yield any level of increase in employee engagement…

The Six Ways Leaders Can Boost Employee Engagement detailed in the other Forbes article provided more specific detail on what action to take;

1. Leaders should share the vision, goal and strategy of the company with employees and involve employees in decision-making on issues that affect their work.
2. Leaders should discuss each employee's job description and how it ties to the business goals.
3. Employee performance should be evaluated regularly. Employees' area of strengths should be recognized and leveraged.
4. Exemplary employee performance should be recognized, appreciated and rewarded with an incentive.
5. Leaders should have an open-door policy, and every employee should be encouraged to speak up about their questions or concerns.
6. Leaders should ask for upward feedback so that employees can let them know about their leadership performance.

While these are quite a bit more specific on what needs to be done,  I maintain that a shorter list coupled with a crystal-clear understanding of exactly how we can apply that list every single day can produce better results ten times out of ten; the more steps we need to keep up with, the less likely we are to get it done!

When it comes to providing our teams with something they can easily measure, a purpose they can connect with, and an understanding that they’re an important part of the process, we’ll be well on our way to earning the increased discretionary effort, and ultimately the improved individual performance, that’s so closely tied to higher engagement. With that in mind, we’ll look at how simple doing each of these can be next time!