Employee Engagement & Emotional Connection

Employee engagement is by default uniquely defined for your company by what you measure.

If your measurement is an annual employee survey that ranks on a 1-10 scale, "I am appreciated" or "My manager cares about me" then that is your definition. 

A challenge is that an annual survey is just that, a single point in time measurement of people's feelings. If this same approach was taken in my marriage, then I might spend the next year putting action plans around a failing marriage because just before the survey I mistakenly heard “4 or 8” vs. “48” hours to thaw the Thanksgiving turkey.

I recall the days of having employee appreciation week with plenty of free food and ice cream, carnival games, dunk tanks and three-legged races. Even renting out an entire large movie theater so employees could watch the movie of their choice and bring their family. We did everything possible to make sure employees were “feeling good” about their place of “work” by giving them the opportunity to not actually “work” and then handed them the annual employee engagement survey. 

How does your company address this survey timing issue?

Are you measuring and in turn addressing true engagement as it relates to employees performing at their best?

I always believed that my job as a leader was to provide the environment, tools, and training for employees to be able to perform at their best.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to drive, measure, and by default define, employee engagement and satisfaction as the one thing that actually sparks employees’ peak performance? That one thing -- Emotional Connection.  

CEO of Best Practice Institute, top Executive Coach, and Top 10 Global Guru, Louis Carter presents this in his new book entitled, "In Great Company: How to Spark Peak Performance By Creating an Emotionally Connected Workplace".

This book provides a researched and evidenced-based strategy to boost the effectiveness of your teams and propel the growth of your business.

The most valuable asset for any business is its people. But for all the talk of employee engagement, too many approaches leave employees uninspired or only momentarily inspired. What really drives people is truly loving where they work, and feeling a bond with their company. More than free ice cream or even flashy salaries, what drives engagement and performance is an emotional connection. When people see how their work affects organizational outcomes positively, and see that their work matters to their managers, colleagues, and the wider world, that's emotional connectedness. It is a motivating sense of satisfaction and intellectual alignment -- and it can only come from feeling appreciated, respected and part of a shared and worthy purpose.

In his book, Carter shows leaders how to forge that connection. He lays out a highly effective prescription for getting your people to love where they work, and fill the employee experience with a sense of belonging and meaning. 

Bridging the engagement gap can't be done piecemeal. Carter's holistic strategy covers every facet of the workplace and works in any organization from legacy to startup, multinational to small and lean. It provides CEOs with a comprehensive game plan and real-life, practical examples for unleashing the power of people. When leaders can bring staff and company together, the result is an unprecedented level of performance and a truly great company.

Other Employee Engagement strategies you may be interested in are:

• A Blueprint for Employee Engagement - A Complete Approach and Guide to Drive Employee Engagement.
• An Engaged Culture - Support the need for your engagement survey and action process with this compelling presentation.
• Employee Engagement Survey Results & Next Steps - Comprehensive internal and external analysis of your employee engagement survey results in a distinct "story-like" format.

These are located at ExecutiveShowcase.com which is the marketplace dedicated to improving the credibility of the HR function through the buying and selling of executable strategic HR presentations and training. All products include robust subject knowledge and/or facilitation notes, are certified for both content and quality, and are designed for you to customize if you like and to use as your own.

Steve Lebofsky is the Co-founder and CEO of Executive Showcase which offers practical and executable people strategies and training to make impactful contributions to your business. Reach out to learn more ExecutiveShowcase.com or email us at [email protected].