Improving Employee Engagement

Employers struggle with a variety of motivation and emotion-based issues with employees. How to attract, engage, and inspire top talent to create winning teams is one of the most requested keynotes.  This is usually combined with some form of addressing generational differences, communication, culture, leadership, teamwork, and personality conflict.  Engagement has been broken down into three parts by Gallup including engaged (13%), not engaged (63%), and actively disengaged (60%).

With such a large percentage of workers in the category of not engaged, it brings attention to the costs involved with ambivalence.  If workers are not engaged, they do not put forth any extra effort, they are less innovative, less effective at customer service, less loyal, more likely to job hop, and are less productive.  Ambivalent workers are there to get a paycheck, but they are not likely to volunteer for much more.  They may be harder to spot because they are not necessarily unhappy, but they do not feel connected to the organization and therefore, are less concerned about customers, profitability, and safety.  They are more likely to leave, resulting in costly turnover expenses.

Consider the costs associated with engagement:

• The U.S. economy loses $250 billion a year to turnover; there is a loss of $30.5 billion just for Millennials
• Cost of a disengaged employee averages $3400 per $10,000 in salary
• Engaged companies have a 6% higher net profit margin and grow profits three times faster
• Managers spend up to 40% of their day dealing with conflict and engagement-related issues
• Companies with low engagement scores have 32.7% less operating income

For a complete list of costs involved in engagement, check out 2016 Employee Engagement/Retention Statistics.  There are ways to improve employee engagement. These include:

• Make engagement a priority
• Read the SRHM and Deloitte studies for an in-depth understanding of engagement
• Recognize the importance of understanding emotional aspects of employee behavior
• Determine levels of engagement to get a baseline
• Meet with employees and teams to open a dialogue and develop trust
• Have engaged employees mentor those who are not engaged
• Determine if employees are in jobs that match their preferences and skills
• Examine feedback, respect, and recognition employees receive – the number one driver of engagement is recognition
• Link compensation to engagement

Engagement may vary based on generations and length of service to the company.  As Millennials become the largest group in the workplace, it behooves leaders to learn more about how to attract and retain this group.  They do not require long, detailed-recognition, but frequent notifications that they are doing well and are on track may be very important to their emotional commitment.

Leaders should recognize that the way people work must be evaluated. The days of 8 to 5, no flexibility, and yearly performance reviews are no longer the norm.  People require frequent recognition and feedback.  Leaders who schedule time for feedback will be the ones who reap the rewards. Now that 40% of global workers are remote, it is important to find new ways to connect and to empower people to work virtually.  The successful leaders will begin by hiring the best people, monitor their outcomes, and continue to provide feedback, respect, recognition, and support.

Related Articles:

• Soft Skills: Critical to Employee Success
• First IQ, Then EQ: Leaders Must Now Have CQ
• What Leaders Need to Know About Engagement
• Managing Millennials Requires Understanding Their Values
• The Cost of Engagement and How to Improve It
• How to Develop Soft Skills Not Learned at Work or School
• Forbes: Generational Issues in the Workplace: Millennials vs. Boomers
• Determining Personality Type for Team-Building
• One Key Word Impacts Intelligence, Engagement, Sales, Soft Skills, Gamification, and Millennials

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Has a Book Become the New Business Card?

With the advent of self-publishing, realizing the dream of writing a book has become a reality for more people.  Many guests on my nationally-syndicated radio show have been authors. I was fortunate to interview Sharon Lechter recently, and she brought up how a book has become the new business card.  Sharon, of course, is the co-author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series and several best-selling books based on the recently re-energized Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich series.  Sharon is the ultimate example of a successful author.  Most authors do not have Napoleon Hill Foundation behind their work.  However, many have access to sites like Createspace and others to showcase their writing skills.

Years ago, Seth Godin, is a well-established author, made news when he decided to self-publish.  Godin had enough customer relationships that he no longer needed his publisher.  Publishers can offer a lot of advantages for a new author.  However, once an author is established and has identified their audience, they may not be as necessary. At that time, Godin told the Wall Street Journal, “Publishers provide a huge resource to authors who don’t know who reads their books. What the Internet has done for me, and a lot of others, is enable me to know my readers.” The Internet offers a platform that has changed publishing forever.

The popularity of self-publishing is undeniable. The old definition of what qualifies as a book or being published has changed. Books can include fewer pages than in the past, and they can be downloadable e-books.  They open doors for speakers and consultants.  They offer international recognition.  More than 725,000 self-published works were registered in 2015.  “As the field of self-publishing matures, the quality of both content and format for many of these titles is becoming indistinguishable from those published by traditional houses,” said Beat Barblan, Direct of Identifier Services at Bowker. “In recent years, the number of independent authors topping prominent bestseller lists is a clear indication that readers are embracing author-published titles.”

Has this made a book become the new business card?  Andrew Medal believed it had, as he explained in his entrepreneur.com article Books are the New Business Card in 2015.  This question has become an even more intriguing since that time. Books are a marketing tool just as a business card has been in the past because it establishes expertise, sets you apart, opens doors, and brings in new business.  It also begs another question: If everyone has a book, how has that impacted the value of having one?

Related Articles:

• Soft Skills: Critical to Employee Success
• First IQ, Then EQ: Leaders Must Now Have CQ
• What Leaders Need to Know About Engagement
• Managing Millennials Requires Understanding Their Values
• The Cost of Engagement and How to Improve It
• How to Develop Soft Skills Not Learned at Work or School
• Forbes: Generational Issues in the Workplace: Millennials vs. Boomers
• Determining Personality Type for Team-Building
• One Key Word Impacts Intelligence, Engagement, Sales, Soft Skills, Gamification, and Millennials

One Key Word That Impacts Intelligence, Engagement, Sales, Soft Skills, Gamification, and Millennials

There is an emotional component behind most of the things that will make or break employees’ and leaders’ success.  When someone first hears the word emotion, it may suggest emotional intelligence.  Developing emotional intelligence is one important factor that has been demonstrated to lead to success.  However, that is just part of the picture.

Emotions are a big part of engagement as well. Engagement is the emotional commitment the employee feels toward the organization and its goals.   Emotion creeps up when discussing soft skills, culture, sales skills, and just about anything regarding success at work.  Soft skills include components such as interpersonal skills.  Having strong interpersonal skills are a big part of emotional intelligence.

Sales skills often require tapping into consumer’s emotions.  Sales skills are a big part of being successful as an entrepreneur as well.  Some of the top emotion-based issues employees, leaders, and entrepreneurs face, involve managing emotions, finding ways to become emotionally committed and having others become emotionally committed, and developing ways to improve emotional awareness in others.  What makes a top salesperson successful?  They find an emotional need or pain.  Sales are based on people’s greed, fear, envy, pride, shame, and a host of other emotions that lead to a feeling of emotional reward.  When creating content for consumers, marketing professionals consider the motions that design, color, and images will have on them.

Gamification has been added to the workplace to develop employees on an emotional level.   Emotions are powerful and impact learning.  Training programs must have aesthetically pleasing aspects, or negative emotions could result. Gaming has become a strong focus for Millennials as they see it as a form of entertainment.  However, it can also be used to create positive emotions to improve training and productivity.  Plutchik’s psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion explained there are eight primary emotions which include anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy.  These emotions trigger behavior.  He suggested eight primary bipolar emotions: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Up to 90% of purchasing decisions are based on an emotional response.

People in sales situations, at work, in school, or at home, may have difficulty expressing emotions or even understanding their emotions or those of others.  This difficulty has led to a multitude of problems that impact behaviors.  Most people are hired for their skills and fired for their behaviors.  This problem with behaviors is a big part of what employers call soft skills.  Soft skills can include a multitude of issues including lack of effective interactions with others.  The sooner employers realize that emotions are not just a part of emotional intelligence, but engagement, productivity, sales, and a vast array of outcomes that can be either positive or negative if employers find ways to capitalize understanding their value at work.

To find out more about emotions, check out some of these authors and speakers.  All but two of them have been on Take the Lead (my nationally-syndicated radio show), and I have been part of events where I heard the other two speak.  I highly recommend looking into the work that these individuals have produced because all of them are very impressive:

• Emotional Intelligence: Travis Bradberry and Gleb Tsipursky
• Engagement and Culture: Chris Edmonds and Ricardo Gonzalez
• Soft Skills and Sales: Tom Hopkins and Jim Britt and Mark Hunter
• Gamification: Brian Wong and Sarah Kunst
• Millennials: Tai Tran and Simon Sinek

Related Articles:

• Soft Skills: Critical to Employee Success
• First IQ, Then EQ: Leaders Must Now Have CQ
• What Leaders Need to Know About Engagement
• Managing Millennials Requires Understanding Their Values
• The Cost of Engagement and How to Improve It
• How to Develop Soft Skills Not Learned at Work or School
• Forbes: Generational Issues in the Workplace: Millennials vs. Boomers
• Determining Personality Type for Team-Building