Recharge Your Team: Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement!

Hey Peacemakers!

In today's competitive business landscape, the success of your organization hinges not just on the strategies you employ but on the people who execute them. As I reflect on the 34 years in my professional experience from intern to c-suite, there is one factor that I found impacts the bottom line regardless of industry or position - employee engagement. Disengaged employees can significantly affect your bottom line through decreased productivity, lower profitability, and higher turnover rates. This week, we are focusing on transforming this challenge into an opportunity by leveraging emotional intelligence.

Understanding Employee Engagement: Why It Matters

Impact of Disengagement: Recent studies have shown that disengaged employees are 34% less productive and their lack of commitment costs businesses between 18% to 34% of their annual salaries in lost profitability and productivity. Moreover, companies with low engagement scores have a turnover rate that is 40% higher than those with high engagement scores.

Engaged employees are not just more likely to stay with your company but also bring creativity, productivity, and an overall positive momentum that propels your organization forward. They are the backbone of your competitive advantage.

Disengaged employees are more likely to leave your organization or decide to stay in the organization and do less work, take more time off, and often complain which can attribute to a toxic workplace environment and erode the company morale.

Q: What's the connection to Emotional Intelligence?

A: The pillars of emotional intelligence are: self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills which are imperative when it comes to employee engagement. Leaders who take time to understand and develop each employee plus knowing the gifts and needs of each one learns how to optimize their strengths thus increasing employee engagement. Here is a simplified gameplan for you to use as an example.

The Gameplan: Enhancing Employee Engagement Across All Levels

Step 1: Measure Current Engagement - What's your baseline?

• Tool: Start with an anonymous employee survey to gauge engagement levels and identify areas for improvement. Sometimes employees prefer an outside agency or consultant to lead the survey. If you are unsure, ask your team before deploying the survey and have both qualitative and quantitative questions.
• Action: Use tailored questions to extract meaningful insights about what motivates and discourages your workforce.

Step 2: Foster Open Communication

• Tool: Implement regular 'Town Hall' or skip level meetings and encourage an open dialogue between employees and management. Set a cadence and be consistent. Your team is watching you lead these initiatives; if you are not engaged, they will follow your example.
• Action: Equip managers with the skills to effectively communicate, listen, and respond to employee concerns. If you don't have an inhouse team, please outsource and leverage the experts who are culturally competent with proven expertise in the areas your organization need.

Step 3: Provide Growth Opportunities

• Tool: Develop clear career paths and continuous learning opportunities within your organization for your leaders. This can be overwhelming or even intimidating for some organizations due to size of organization, scarcity of development funding, and/or leadership having a fixed mindset about intentionally developing employees beyond the job description. I recommend that some of my clients leverage strategic partnerships in the community to make it easier and to make employee development a priority for all.
• Action: Offer regular training sessions, workshops, and potential lateral moves within the company to keep employees stimulated and aware of growth opportunities. Working on the mindset and culture of the agency mitigates internal competition and a negative morale thus keeping employees engaged and employed longer. Happier employees stay in position longer and have higher engagement and productivity per workforce statistics and world happiness report.

Step 4: Recognize and Reward

• Tool: Establish a recognition program that not only rewards results but also effort and innovation. Employees are more engaged when they are involved in the work and the future of their workplace. According to the World Economic Forum conference this past year, one quarter of jobs (23%) are expected to change in the next five years while 69 million new jobs will be created and 83 million eliminated. The way we work, train, and develop employees and ourselves as leaders will require more alignment, alignment and development of tools, and a culture shift to unlock innovation and connectedness as we have more companies invest in remote work and an influx if younger leaders enter the workplace.
• Action: Use both formal recognition (awards, bonuses) and informal recognition (praise, thank you notes) regularly. In creating an action plan for this step, I recommend taking notes from the Baby Boomer and GenXers to get back to basics; simple and intentional communication. Relationship building is the secret sauce of connectedness in the workplace to intentionally get to know what your employees need and want in their work life and co-create a plan to meet those collective needs. When I recommend this to current and future clients, money is often mentioned in the conversation. Here is how I reframe the question of money. "How much does it cost to send a handwritten thank you note or birthday card in the mail?" We must remember that small things like this have a huge impact on employee wellness.

Step 5: Create a Culture of Inclusivity and Respect

• Tool: Promote diversity and ensure all employees feel respected and valued, regardless of their background or position. With all of the recent backlash and fear associated with messaging and implementing DEI initiatives and strategies, I want to first remind you to BREATHE. This is not a difficult thing to navigate because many organizations have been doing a version of this work in small doses. View this as adding more supports to keep your bottom line high and your attrition low.
• Action: Implement policies that promote inclusivity and organize team-building activities that enhance mutual respect and understanding. I recommend starting with your current policies and employee handbooks and then delve into what your exit surveys and employee surveys tell you. Next, conduct some research for trends and trainings that work for your employees and their current and future working situations (i.e. office, hybrid, remote).

Step 6: Ensure Work-Life Balance

• Tool: Assess and redesign policies that govern work hours, remote work opportunities, and unplugged time. As you reimagine what your optimal productivity model looks like, keep in mind that using "big brother" tools for solely auditing active times takes away from the adoption and adaptation of the tool. I recommend leveraging your operations and process driven employees to be thought partners and innovators of how to assess, redesign, and deploy what works for your organization.
• Action: Promote a culture where work-life balance is respected as essential to employee well-being and engagement. This action is low hanging fruit because modeling the behaviors you desire in the new culture is contagious. A good number of my clients feel that they cannot impact the culture in the agency due to previous leadership or the large number of employees in the organization. My challenge to leaders involves starting with one employee at a time, one action at a time. The institutional identity is the fabric of an organization that creates a myriad of experiences based on who work there and what happens inside and outside the organization. Consequently, know that you can intentionally reach out to one direct report daily and share tools and tips to create formidable relationships to reform any culture. If you want to amplify your impact, consider mentoring a few emerging leaders in the organization.

Case Study: Lyons, Doughty & Veldhuis, P.C. (LDV)

The executive team of this creditors' rights law firm dedicated to consumer collections in four states transformed their workplace culture by implementing a DEI strategy which was employee and stakeholder led to improve employee engagement and productivity. This resulted in a decreased turnover rate and increase in both engagement and productivity. We started with a two year contract where we analyzed industry trends, company research, and surveys. Next, I led a employee satisfaction survey and we revised the policies, handbooks, and training with input and ownership from the employees. "I cannot imagine our organization before the changes" Hillary recalls.

Next Steps: Create Your Engagement Checklist

Let's make your workplace not just a place where people work, but a space where they thrive. Your leadership in driving engagement can redefine your organization’s path to success. Look for a free template this Friday on my LinkedIn page!