What can you do to make your leaders and managers accountable for Employee Engagement?

Employee Engagement is a very important and yet still unexplored tool in the real sense for most of the Organisations. The effectiveness of engagement will lead the employees to be part of Business, when they feel they have the right to share their opinion and their voices are being heard. For the Leaders and Managers, to their team, it is closely connected with the team, when they think about the development of people, provide a clear career path to them and help them to grow subsequently. Recognise their efforts timely and value their contribution to the Organisation. For them, to keep the team well engaged and connected, they should have the collaborative leadership style.

Employee Engagement is just a buzzphrase. Why do I say that? Gallup, one of the leaders in employee engagement, says companies lose $7.8 trillion dollars annually because of disengaged employees. And yet those same companies spend billions of dollars per year trying to "engage" their employees. It doesn't work because Employee Engagement is a useless metric. How else do you explain spending billions to improve something that Gallup themselves (recipients of a lot of those dollars) says hasn't budged in decades? The clear expectation here is that Employee Engagement efforts are fruitless. Instead, leaders and managers need to turn to Employee Empowerment - a practice that will improve culture and performance for good.

#Culture # leadership # employee engagement Creating a culture of accountability for employee engagement requires a commitment from both leadership, HR team. Since their involvement creates a culture that promotes collaboration & trust. It not only encourages the teams but also it makes them feel, valued, heard & supported. Engaged workforce is an important success driver who will embrace & will show adaptability towards VUCA changes that are taking place around us.

I think everyone has to understand the importance of employee engagement. Businesses are nothing without their people. To have the buy in of highly motivated colleagues who trust in you and work together in positive and open ways is good for business. Highlighting the benefits and reasons why employee engagement is so important helps garner buy in for accountability.

Like most successful initiatives, engagement also drives from the top. And the primary aspect is Ownership, absolute ownership. To keep a workforce engaged, motivated and hence productive is as much the Manager's and Leader's job, as it is of the HR professionals. Usually Leaders and / or Managers focus on performance / outcomes. However, the inputs w.r.t. engagement levels and development need to be owned by them as well.

Most managers are employed in their role due to their technical skills. But people skills are hugely important, so ensuring you have a programme of training for all managers that develops ‘soft skills’ is key to ensuring they have have the competencies to build employee engagement.

Managers are in direct contact with their teams and have a significant impact on the day-to-day work environment. They can influence factors such as workload distribution, communication, recognition, and feedback—all of which contribute to employee engagement. Managers are often seen as leaders within their teams. As leaders, they should take responsibility for creating a positive and engaging work environment that fosters productivity, job satisfaction, and overall well-being.

Understand that "coaching" is different from supervising. In coaching, you're drawing out their thinking on what they can start doing, stop doing or do differently to be effective...not simply telling them what to do. Show them you believe in them and their capability to problem solve so that you don't have to micromanage...then, they won't micromanage their people (a key engagement killer).

It's a huge challenge to convince Managers to be People Managers. HR ought to spend some effort on educating Managers to take ownership of their people and also help them to develop people management skills and attitude.

Rather than focusing on the feedback alone, Managers need to also incorporate the feed-forward, which will show the progressive and futuristic approach of these Managers. Further, Leaders and Managers often confuse Mentoring for Coaching, despite the fact that these are different approaches with completely different objectives to fulfill.

Adding to this, I would also focus on explaining the 'why' for managers and leaders What are the outcomes you as an organisation are trying to achieve and what evidence do you have that line managers, leaders and other influence this. We see that Line Managers have maybe the strongest influence on overall Employee Engagement impartial around: ???? Providing support when it is needed ???? Setting expectations and goals for their people For leaders we see that being seen is important when it comes to overall perception Explaining the why with evidence is as important as explaining the how

If empowering leaders and managers is effective, as this article suggests, wouldn't it also be reasonable that empowering their employees would be equally effective? Empowered people create great organizations. Remember, managers are also employees. They're part of the disengaged. You can't fix a company by fixating on managers. Empower your employees down to the lowest levels of the hierarchy. Teach them why their job is important. Help them understand how their work contributes to the mission. Ask them to take responsibility for creating extraordinary outcomes. Support and celebrate them constantly. Show them the fruits of their labor. Communicate transparently. Do those things and you won't need to lean on managers.

I agree Bryan Howard. Empowerment and accountability are important for all employees. Especially, "Help them understand how their work contributes to the mission. Ask them to take responsibility for creating extraordinary outcomes." Most people want to do a good job. Help them help you, by connecting the day to day with the mission and goals of the organization. It's a win for everyone!

The younger generation wants to be heard,so inclusion in setting objectives gives them insight into the direction of the organization. They don’t really want to make the final decision, but want to voice their opinion. Leaders must also demonstrate “what’s in it for them.”

Co-creation of solutions leads to the better implementation of the action plans. It helps align the leaders and managers with the primary objective, helps in leveraging their expertise and different viewpoints and fosters innovation and creativity.

Holding leaders accountable creates a culture and trust and transparency. Another advantage is that accountability encourages them to learn from their mistakes, seek improvement & feedback. Accountability will also help them measure their progress & performance and celebrate achievements. Finally, accountability helps increase collaboration and communication amongst team members, share information and ideas, resolve conflicts and issues constructively and respectfully, all this playing an important role in increasing employee engagement.

Having oversight to hold your leaders/supervisors/managers accountable is an integral part to increasing engagement. If you are able to track and even "gamify" their engagement, you will undoubtedly see positive results. A platform like Secchi not only tracks the engagement of a supervisor, but allows leadership to track the type of engagements, the frequency, and the impact those engagements have on their teams.

Best bet- Numbers. When you talk in numbers 3 out of 4 people listen to you. Give them insights. How? 1. Exit interviews: This can clearly map out reason for attrition. Give them both the rate of attrition and the percentage of this being due employee dissatisfaction. 2. 360 Degree feedback: Have questions where peers rate each other, managers and the leadership. Having clear questions and ensuring complete anonymity in this case might help with better results. 3. Engagement Attendance and Employee happiness quotient/Employee NPS: Tracking this and sharing scores in MRM, in small businesses this can be analyzed departmentally and each departmental head can thereby be asked to provide ways to tackle this at their department level.

To solve the employee engagement dilemma effectively, we need to explore the less-traveled paths even as we utilize the known ones. Consider: - Reverse Mentoring: Flip the script! Encourage employees to mentor their leaders on engagement from their unique perspectives. This empowers team members and enlightens leaders. - Upward Review: Let team members review their leaders anonymously. This candid feedback can help leaders understand their team's expectations and the impact of their actions or inactions. - Employee-Driven Initiatives: Empower employees to spearhead engagement initiatives. When leaders see their team members driving positive change, they'll naturally want to be a part of it.

I created a 10 statement survey that will tell you all you need to know to move from Employee Engagement to Employee Empowerment as your primary success metric. Instead of the standard rating scale of 1-5, the rating scale is binary - either yes or no. Only the most courageous leaders dare to use it because once it's deployed, change will begin. Employees will want to come to work, ready to make a difference. Client satisfaction will increase. Revenue and profit will follow. The hard work to get there will be worth the initial pain of seeing how your employees really feel. Forget Engagement. Measure Empowerment and change the game.

It will always be difficult to get the right measures in place, as engagement is part-science (data shows what works) and part-art (people aren't machines, they have emotions). Another important angle to consider is education - exposing leaders and managers to the latest thoughts and ideas on leadership and engagement. Rather than giving people a play-book, it introduces different perspectives, will trigger a range of thoughts, and will hopefully make people stop and think. It isn't essential to respond in a consistent way on issues such as engagement, leadership and communications. What is important, however, is to consistently respond... always do something, and history will arc in your favour.

enps score is an important metric that can help understand the overall employee engagement levels in an organisation. The total percentage of employees who are promoters-employees who would recommend the organisation to their friends or known people- of the organisation definitely tells the whole picture.

I've been talking a lot about the relationship between leadership and engagement, and I'd like to share some key points: - Listen actively to your team, strengthening connections; - Leadership means daily inspiration through personal example; - Provide psychological safety for self-expression and growth; - Prioritize people over processes; focus on their development; - Transparency fosters autonomy and boosts significantly the engagement. Notice that all these points are interconnected. Just start :)