How Business Owners Can Improve Employee Engagement, "Right Now"

#findyourcompass #smallbusinessowners #employeeengagement

As a striving business enterprise, the engagement of your employees drives the growth of your business and the health of your long term vision.

However, this is an arena where business owners FAIL at, and FAIL awfully. Today's 21st century leader must adapt to an emerging generation of workers, new idealogies and ways of thinking and a transition from all male dominated industries, to a balance of women and minority professionals making a name for themselves and impacting many as a result with their incredible work ethic and quality of work.

I put together a simple point by point checklist that address a few key areas that we, as business owners whom lead high performance teams, are reliant upon to ensure growth in our respective businesses.

The 3 Point Employee Engagement Checklist

1. Connect what employees do to what they care about.

Revise your organization’s mission statement to connect with employee values.?If you don't know your employees, how can they ever feel part of the larger picture? Get them involved from the very beginning of their time with you.

Here is something to consider:

Employees are more likely to feel they fit at an organization that stands for social change. Studies show that people are willing to give up financial benefits to work for an organization that practices corporate social and environmental responsibility.

2. Make the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable.

Offer employees the flexibility to try new work tasks so they can discover their intrinsic interests.?

Hmmm, novel idea, huh!?

Whether activities are intrinsically interesting likely depends on the individual employee — in other words, the same activity might spark intrinsic motivation for one employee but not for another.

To provide employees the opportunity to determine what sparks their intrinsic interest, consider a job rotation program in which employees move through several positions within a company in a relatively short period of time.

3. Institute a benefits program that encourages productivity and sends a message of appreciation..

Reward employees with time in addition to money.?

Rewarding employees with time (e.g., extra time off, paid vacations) on top of money (e.g., cash bonuses, equity) represents a direct route to what's at their heart and their mind and for that, that is bigger than money.

One way to reward employees with time involves giving them extra mandatory time off. For instance, in response to pandemic-induced burnout this summer, some organizations like Bumble gave employees an extra week off. Rewarding employees with time is an especially effective way to increase feelings of time affluence and drive employee engagement.

In terms of your financial package, ascertain the level of value that your employees desire - get to the heart of what they want.

Take into consideration the pay scales of all your employees and you will find that you have a variance of needs. Use benefits that can be specifically tailored towards different segments of your employee base that can add powerful value and in a way where it can be used as a retention tool for your best people.

Use this checklist as a guide - would love your perspective on any one of these three points or all of them for that matter. Let's ensure we are showing up right for our people and in turn, when they feel valued, it will provide benefits that are immeasurable beyond the dollar.

As always, if you like this post, use the hashtag #findyourcompass. Let's share this with other owners that perhaps are facing critical issues in their business. My goal is to change one person at a time and then an army of business owners and an army of businesses that can benefit from this information.

Let's help business owners, Find their COMPASS!

Happy Monday!

-Roger