Practical Ways to Address Employee Engagement

King Arthur:   “Well, who is your lord?”

Dennis’ Mother:   “We don’t have a lord.”

King Arthur: “What?”

Dennis: “I told you, we’re an anarcho-syndicist commune. We take turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

• Massive collaboration to initiate and integrate sustainability. Direct employee engagement at innovation rather than competition.

Now, these are two completely separate concepts that can act alone.  But, when done in concert, I would imagine the results could be miraculous.  One option would be to launch an organization-wide sustainability audit and then institute an internal task force to come up with ways to address the areas of highest vulnerability.  This should include employees from staff through leadership levels.  I would appoint someone in middle/ early management as the project lead with a leader as a mentor.  This will provide skill development for the more inexperienced manager and also give credibility to the project so that the staff level will be more likely to speak up and participate.

For the innovation piece, tell the committee up front to “dream big”.  Tell them to brainstorm solutions regardless of what they think they will cost, how many people will have to be involved, etc.  In other words, tell them that you want them to be as creative as possible in their sustainability solutions.  Then, as leadership, provide them with tools to aid in their innovation.

• Al Gore at #SHRM10 “employee retention and engagement key to future of business.”

Ok, I was not present for Al Gore’s speech, however, if this is an accurate quote of what he said, I think he was on the right track but ultimately missed the boat.  Why?  Well, in my experience, employee retention is not the key to the future of business.  Retaining the RIGHT employees is key.  There is always a need to let low performers or employees who do not promote the corporate philosophy and mission go.  We do not want to retain them in most cases.  So, I would change his statement to be “Key employee retention and engagement leads to a stronger future for the business.”  The challenge is actually retaining the key employees.  Now, some will be motivated by money and others by challenge or opportunity. I’ll throw it back to Paul Hebert to address a real-life example of how to incent people to stay with the organization.

• Cross departmental teamwork is critical to overall engagement.

This one will only work if you make it measurable.  Set up cross-functional teams that actually align several department or several parts of departments.  Focus on providing service as consultants would, even if the customer you are dealing with is internal.  Set this new team up for success and instead of rewarding individual performance, reward the team when they accomplish specific milestones together.  This may be a revenue target, number of new customers served, or whatever metric makes sense for that particular team and the work they are doing.  The point is to help employees understand that they can accomplish more and feel greater fulfillment when working as a cross-functional team.

So, there are a few ways to get to the rest of the story.  What do you think?  Have examples of how you’re organization has done this?  Share it in the comments.