Rethinking the 9-to-5: Where and When Work Truly Happens
Navigating the return to the office isn’t just about logistics: it’s a balancing act between competing priorities. On one side, you have employees who have grown accustomed to the flexibility and autonomy of remote work, and are resistant to being forced back into a traditional office setting. On the other hand, your organization is grappling […]
How Leaders Who Listen Can Transform Organizations With Paul Mastrangelo
On this episode of Leading Through Listening, I’m joined by Paul Mastrangelo, president and owner at First Domino Consulting. Paul brings a wealth of knowledge as an organizational psychologist, specializing in workplace behavior and the transformation of organizations through employee insights. In this conversation, we dive into how listening — not just hearing, but truly […]
Top 4 Trends in Engagement
When you think about it, employee engagement has a lot to do with what drives most people to do their best. We all have certain needs that keep us interested in anything that we’re doing for a long time. Employees need the same things and if organizations tend to those needs, there’s a good chance […]
Does Employee Engagement Improve Business Performance?
This is a no brainer. All you have to do is remember a time when you received excellent service from someone on the job. If that person gave you service that was respectful and fast, they knew the product or service inside out, and they seemed genuinely glad to serve you… they either just won […]
What Is Employee Engagement and How Can It Help Your Organization?
There are a lot of opinions out there about what employee engagement looks like and what it does. But, to keep it simple, let’s look at what some engaged employees feel and experience at work How do employees experience “engagement” on the job? Their managers keep them up-to-date on the organization’s bigger direction. Employees feel […]
What Is Employee Engagement?
Employee Engagement describes the way employees demonstrate commitment, ownership, and discretionary effort toward their work, team, and organization. How people feel about their jobs, working conditions, management, compensation, and a host of other factors determines how well an organization performs. Engaged employees are loyal and committed to the organization. They are far more likely to […]
What Employee Engagement Looks Like in the Financial Service Sector
The financial service industry is a complex compendium of banking and securities, commercial real estate, investment management and insurance. In 2016, this mammoth sector represented 7.3 percent (or $1.4 trillion) of U.S. gross domestic product. What does employee engagement look like in a sophisticated industry employing more than 6.2 million Americans? In general terms, there’s huge competition […]
The Five Barriers to Employee Engagement
Last year, close to a billion US dollars was spent on employee engagement around the world. If we’re spending all this money, shouldn’t we be getting better? Sadly not. Data shows engagement seems to be flatlining at best. Why? Reasons are outlined in “Translating Employee Engagement Research into Practice,” a 2017 paper authored by Alan […]
No Budget Is No Excuse
Many U.S. local governments lament budget constraints when it comes to employee engagement. If you see your budget as a barrier to employee engagement, you’re not alone. In fact, Employee Benefits polled employers on the subject, and 47% said the cost of engagement was an obstacle. The poll also found 44% of respondents named time and […]
Retain Top Talent with Meaningful Employee Engagement
Compensation Might Entice Quitters, But Then What? The U.S. economy is now firing on all cylinders such that many companies are facing attraction and retention issues. Recently in the Wall Street Journal, David Harrison and Eric Morath’s piece “In This Economy, Quitters are Winning” looks at how American workers are choosing to leave their jobs at […]
Want to Motivate Sales Professionals? Applaud Their Resilience
There’s a whole lot of psychological know-how behind managing people directly responsible for gross revenue. Be it inside or outside sales (or fundraisers – the non-profit synonym for sales) these career professionals are the first to admit they’re a breed unto themselves. To master the art of sales team motivation, the first rule of engagement […]
Uniting Unions in Support of Employee Engagement
Like cilantro, it’s an either-or kind of thing. Either your organization and unions like one another and get along palatably. Or you don’t. Many of us have had a first-hand (or maybe arm’s length) experience from one side of the fence or the other. For unionized organizations intending to introduce or raise employee engagement levels, […]
The Powerful Relationship of Engagement to Performance
Thirteenth-century Persian poet and Sunni mystic, Rumi, once ruminated, “Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.” Unlocking the heart’s desire is at the very core of employee engagement. But engagement isn’t just a warmhearted, convivial sort of thing. Engagement is part of […]
Turn March Madness Into April Advantage: Engage the Hearts and Minds of Sport Enthusiasts
It started with Super Bowl Sunday. This year roughly 103.4 million people watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots. Seemingly some 16.5 million people or one in ten Americans skipped work the next day, according to CNBC, costing employers somewhere in the vicinity of $3 billion. Then crossing oceans and time zones, for […]
Skilled Labor Shortages Threaten Growth: How to Gain the Upper Hand with Employee Engagement
It’s midway through 2018. The economy continues to expand. The talent pool continues to contract. Skilled labor shortages are prolific. No sector is immune. Employers predict wage increases. They say this elevated demand for labor is constraining growth. They report losing out on business. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as an example: A […]
Millennial Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Expectations Fuel Employee Engagement
Millennials are the dominant force in today’s work world and their drum-call for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) keeps getting louder and more persistent. Business pundits and scholars point to growing evidence between CSR and employee engagement. One of those studies, out of IBM Global Services, found 44 percent of young professionals wouldn’t consider an employer with a bad […]
Measuring Up: Tools of the Employee Engagement Trade
Landscape masters Claude Monet and JMW Turner surveyed the lay of the land and painted what they saw, each with their own interpretation and style. Likewise, your organization’s senior leaders look at their employee landscape, interpret what they perceive, and paint a mental picture with broad sweeping strokes. While interpretive creative license has a place […]
Managing Generational Gaps in the Workplace
Do Age Differences Really Matter? Check out some of the online genealogy sites that help trace family lineage and history. The generally accepted time between generations averages 20 to 25 years (from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child). With good health extending our life expectancies in North America it’s not inconceivable our […]
Links Between Employee Engagement and Organizational Success
“People create organizations, therefore the concepts and systems of any organization must reflect the diversity and complexity of the people who comprise it.” What a great quote. Altruistic, yet oh so true; employee engagement stripped to the bare bones. Kevin Fong, a proponent of Eastern traditions and philosophies, offers this golden nugget in his paper, The […]
Leave it to Self: Unleash Engagement through Empowerment
When you do an internet search and look up employee engagement tips or employee engagement ideas what you’ll find is the majority, in fact almost all the topics are what executives can do or what managers can do. Very few ideas or suggestions look at what employees can do to drive engagement. At a talk […]
Leadership and Employee Engagement
How to connect with 10,000 employees (more or less) Leaders often ask me what the most “highly engaged” organizations do differently that engages their employees. While there are a number of key drivers of engagement that highly engaged organizations tend to do well, I have come to observe one consistent difference. That difference is how […]
Job Purposing: Igniting a Sense of Purpose at Work
Employees At Their Best — On Purpose When someone sees a strong purpose, when they feel really good about what their organization stands for, and they feel they have true meaning in what they’re doing then they are going to feel pride in the organization, optimistic about its future and they’ll emotionally invest. And of […]
Is Employee Engagement Part Of Your Organization’s DNA?
Where does the notion of employee engagement come from? What’s the motivation? For HR leaders looking to elevate their status and overall value, making those kinds of connections can be the portal to a C-suite. It’s all about how you connect something like attraction and retention to corporate culture, and that culture to employer/employee branding, and that […]
A Point or Two About Engagement and the Time it Takes to See Progress
When an organization is on a mission to improve employee engagement, questions abound. Invariably someone will ask, “how much can we expect engagement to improve year over year?” It’s a stock question without a pat answer. Engagement measurement isn’t an exact science. There are lots of variables to consider. How long has employee engagement been a […]
Promote, Praise, and Influence Engagement in the Workplace
When was the last time someone at work gave you recognition for a job well done? Count yourself lucky if you can remember, and extremely fortunate if employee recognition is frequent and regular. Recognition has an impact on everything from employee retention and churn to customer satisfaction, increased productivity, cost savings and even improved safety. […]
How Engaged Companies Handle Parenting
It’s difficult keeping our parenting and work worlds apart. We worry about projects and deadlines when we’re home, contend with babysitters, sick days, PD days and how to get the kids to their dental appointments when we’re on the job. “More and more companies are coming to terms with the fact that the majority of […]
Why & How Employee Engagement in Higher Education Can Help
Higher education is facing enormous hurdles. By some estimates, 50% of universities and colleges in the U.S. are likely to face bankruptcy in the coming decades. Most colleges failed to meet their revenue or enrollment goals for 2016. National Student Clearinghouse data shows U.S. college enrollment has declined for five consecutive years and is projected to continue declining for the […]
Why Employee Engagement Is Globally Misunderstood
When we talk about talent acquisition we tend to cast a wide net to find the people we’re looking for to move our businesses forward. One of the things that’s becoming an interesting addition to the conversation is the whole idea of a global workforce strategy. Back in 2004, management guru Dave Ulrich said “for […]
5 Internal Communication Strategies for HR Professionals
A new study exploring communication requirements of non-desktop, remote, and office workers found despite their different work environments, all three segments share a common view of the importance, frequency, and channels of communication. Research revealed that employees would like to hear from their HR teams more frequently and consider open communication to all employees one […]
5 Conversations Guaranteed to Improve Employee Engagement
In my role at TalentMap I present employee engagement survey results to countless HR and leadership teams. Inevitably, the discussion turns to what to do to improve employee engagement. While each and every presentation and discussion is unique, there is one element that is common throughout: the large majority of strategies and tactics to improve […]
Engage Your Employees Through Compensation, But Without Money. Wait. What?
Are your compensation policies contributing to employee engagement? Perhaps, but it is probably more likely that your compensation policies are actually acting as a drag on engagement, even if your compensation plan is competitive in the marketplace. To understand the role that compensation plays in employee engagement, we need to understand that there are many […]
Employee Turnover Costs & Retention Tips
Employee turnover cost-estimates are as varied as wildflowers in a field. The average cost-per hire is $4,129 says the Society of Human Resource Management based on a human capital benchmark survey of 2,048 respondents reflecting fiscal year 2015. Total direct and indirect costs of replacing a supermarket cashier earning $6.50 per hour is at least $3,637 according […]
Employee Engagement: Engaging Your ‘Older’ Workers
Pop Quiz: Which is the fastest growing segment of the working population in the USA (and probably Canada as well)? If you’re about to answer: Millennials, you would be…. wrong! Despite the fact that the millennial generation is getting the most press, publicity, and attention these days (including from yours truly – mea culpa), the […]
Why Employees in Small Businesses Are More Engaged
When it comes to employee engagement in small businesses, they’re doing something right. TalentMap’s 2017 Employee Engagement Benchmarks study reports organizations with fewer than 250 employees have a collective engagement score of 86 percent. In short, that’s a sizable 13 percentage points higher than the overall score (73 percent) for organizations of all sizes. Mid-sized organizations with […]
Employee Engagement In Not-For-Profits: Doing It For The Cause
Having recently completed a number of engagement surveys and workshops in North America’s cause-driven non-profit sector (i.e. mostly charitable organizations), I’ve been struck by the enormity of the challenges many of these organizations face. Yet I also continue to be highly impressed by the high-level of resilience of their employees in the face of these […]
Employee Engagement in Municipalities: Unique Challenges and Solutions
If the number of surveys and workshops we do for municipalities is any indicator, these organizations have been getting on the employee engagement bandwagon in a major way over the past several years. The case for higher employee engagement in municipalities is clear: higher productivity, better retention, lower absenteeism, better citizen/ratepayer experience, and the list goes […]
Employee Engagement Drives Customer Satisfaction
Engaged employees provide services with pride which can improve customer satisfaction. This is especially important for customer-facing service industries like financial, government, and healthcare sectors. Study after study has shown employee engagement is a predictor of how employees deliver services and how their behavior, in turn, affects customer satisfaction. ISS, a provider of facility services around the world, amassed more than […]
Employee Engagement Best Practices
The first step to improving employee engagement is to ask your employees how they feel and what they think can be done to improve the workplace. The next step is taking action on those results. These actions will be different for each organization, depending on the size, resources, and culture of the organization. There is […]
Employee Engagement Best Practice Series: Setting Up Your Employee Engagement Committee
This is the second in my series of “best practice” blogs on measuring and improving employee engagement. In this series, I’m answering a number of questions which are often asked by our network in terms of how to measure and, more importantly, improve employee engagement. One of the things that tends to perplex many of […]
DIY or Outsourced Employee Engagement Surveys?
What does workplace breach of confidentiality mean? Well, what if you were to say something disparaging about Big Boss, to someone you “trust”, yet somehow Big Boss learns about those criticisms? For a good many employees, worry about confidentiality is an oppressive fear factor when an Employee Engagement survey arrives in their inbox. “Just how secure are my comments?” […]
Decline of the Employee Engagement Empire
Estimates peg the amount of money spent conducting surveys, doing action plans and marshalling resources around the concept of employee engagement in the $720 million USD range in North America. Yet the number of disengaged employees is on the rise. Forbes recently showcased a study by Aon Hewitt that revealed employee engagement dipped for the first […]
Are Millennial Problems Just The Tip Of The Iceberg?
“Coddled, entitled, self-involved and lazy? Are Millennials really that bad?” Based on her experience, Adrienne Batra Editor-in-Chief at the Toronto Sun thinks so. “We love to hate on them” she pronounced likening Millennials to “the kid we want to pick on in the school yard.” Batra’s comments were part of a nationally televised debate exploring […]
Top 8 Ways to Increase Engagement During the Holidays
It seems like a lot of us are in a better mood around the holidays: Strangers might talk to us more, also, friends, family and even people we don’t know very well, might reach out to spend time together. Some will perhaps simply open a door for us or give us the space we need […]
Why Your Christmas Party Won’t Improve Engagement
Depending on the organization’s culture, sometimes workplace Christmas parties can be a great time where everyone feels relaxed and comfortable. But even if that happens, it’s a mistake to rely on one Christmas party a year to ensure ongoing engagement in your organization. It’s just not enough. Employees need to feel consistently valued, appreciated and […]