The employee engagement wish-list


  • lifestyle/workstyle balance and flexibility

  • excellent leadership at top

  • work with industry leader

  • work with inspirational people (boss)

  • work on ˜hot' projects

  • work with leading customers and suppliers

  • opportunity to lead others

  • recognition of ideas

  • excellent work environment (location/facilities)

  • international opportunity (travel)

  • receiving positive feedback

  • company-sponsored education

  • financial rewards (salary/bonus)

  • flexible benefits

  • healthcare programme

  • sabbaticals.

Let's look at these individually, and see what we as employers need to do to make them work.

Lifestyle/workstyle balance and flexibility

We've covered this key criterion in some detail earlier in the book. However, I believe that this is the starting point for everything. Subscribe to lifestyle/workstyle approach and the other issues flow from that. Everyone knows the story that a company's greatest asset walks out of the door every day at six o'clock and might come back the following day. When employees leave your office at six o'clock they are hopefully committed to coming back the following morning. If their lifestyle and your workstyle are synchronised, then they will.

Excellent leadership at the top

Smart people only need a few days to establish whether the top management know what's going on. And smart people go to work and engage with other smart people. If you've got smart top managers, celebrate; if you've got a lousy group at the top of the tree, you won't keep the best talent for very long. It all comes down to respect. If employees respect the leadership you have won a major victory in the battle for engagement and commitment. And never underestimate the power a charismatic leader has to engage people. People - I most certainly believe - follow great leaders . I mean, think about it, no one ever said, ˜I'm off to join the ABC company, I hear they have a great executive committee.' Well they don't, do they?

Work with industry leader

Yes, everyone likes to be associated with a successful organisation. If you are successful it pays to let the marketplace know about it - you'll attract and keep talented individuals.

Work with inspirational people (and bosses)

Work colleagues can make or break a lifestyle/workstyle choice. If employees work well together, spark off ideas in each other, that's great. If they don't, that lifestyle/workstyle equation gets called into question. ˜Can I ever be happy in this place?' is not the sort of question you want employees asking themselves . The same test applies to the immediate superior . It has long been said that people join companies and leave bosses. How true, especially if their boss changes. This can be one of the biggest turn -offs, quickly and totally destroying the lifestyle/workstyle equation of the individual.

Work on ˜hot' projects

This is another of those key engagement factors. Great projects grab people's attention, fire them up and are an effective way to provoke total engagement. I recall years ago visiting the Alstom TGV plant in France. All the engineers were so enthusiastic. As one explained to me, ˜for an engineer this is the place. We are working on the biggest, fastest machine on land.' You got the impression they would work 24 hours a day if they could, and for free too!

Work with leading customers and suppliers

Smart employees want to learn and develop their skills. Often the best places to do this are with customers and suppliers. Being given opportunities to experience this again are part of an ongoing engagement process.

Opportunity to lead others

This is perhaps not for everyone, but it is on the ˜wish list' of many. And, as I pointed out earlier, it usually pays to take on the risk and give someone an opportunity to push the career envelope to its maximum. Remember, don't look at the issue from your perspective, consider the employee's view, and their lifestyle/workstyle view of themselves. This is a moment when people are highly vulnerable and at a pivotal crossroads . They could be given the chance and fail. Or they could succeed. Or they could be told to wait, get frustrated and leave. The lifestyle/workstyle equation comes under great strain at this time.

Recognition of ideas

Make sure that the ˜idea factory' in your business runs smoothly and give recognition for people's ideas. This is a crucial factor in stimulating engagement from employees. Don't give the recognition and the ideas quickly dry up. Worse still, people will take them elsewhere instead.

Excellent work environment (location and facilities)

As I have already explained, you can put the most beautiful office facility in the wrong place and no one will work there. The work environment begins with the location and the ease of getting there. And yes, the internal facilities need to be in place to feed those lifestyle/workstyle needs. For example, some employees don't mind working late if they know there is a take-away they can access, or a bistro or bar they can use. Equally, smart companies that seek to ease the domestic drudgery of their employees win out. Laundry, dry-cleaning services, auto service drop-offs, video rental, medical, dental and supermarket shopping services on-site all help to keep employees engaged and not concerned about other issues while at work. On the subject of environment, my favourite example is the service management company in Denmark who have a company dog who spends work hours at reception . If employees get stressed the idea is that they take the dog for a walk in the woods around the building.

International opportunity (travel)

Gaining experience through cross-border work is a great turn-on for many. Being able to travel and experience first-hand how others execute their work is a vital component of a job. However, Monday to Friday travel week after week takes its toll. So when employees say they want to travel, put that into the lifestyle/workstyle context and get the balance right.

Receiving positive feedback

Everyone knows this is critical, but our new-age employees have a higher level of expectation. The biggest concern here is whether we all have enough well-trained managers to ensure that the process really works.

Company-sponsored education

This is a catch-all that covers everything from Harvard's Executive Summer School, to specialist technical courses and personal coaching and mentoring. In most cases these days employees don't really see these as ˜nice-to-haves' but ˜must-haves'. However, with the dearth of training and development these past years, companies are going to find themselves playing - and paying for - catch-up processes if they truly want to send a serious message about people development.

Financial rewards (salary, bonus, benefits)

These really go without saying. But as explained earlier, many companies are not overhauling and re-tuning their compensation systems and strategies quickly enough to meet changing market conditions. There is no doubt that we are going to have to move toward flexible benefits if we are to genuinely tap into the lifestyle/workstyle equation of our people. The only way we can do that is to come up with some innovative ideas to embrace their needs. Similarly, smart managers are concerned to provide a robust healthcare programme . Companies determined to leave the onus for this with the individual employee are going to have to fight yet another competitive advantage from those companies who provide it. In the end, choice of a firm to work with may not come down to one single criterion, but to several varied criteria, all just that little bit better or more flexible in one company than another.

A good example of that would be the last item on the Employee Engagement Wish-list: sabbaticals . In truth, virtually no one offers them, but those who do gain a certain distinction from other companies. Smart companies, I have observed , who offer this usually don't leave it as an open -ended ˜vacation', but set the employee the task of studying , developing some blue-sky ideas or working on a special assignment (possibly with a not-for-profit or educational organisation).




The New Rules of Engagement(c) Life-Work Balance and Employee Commitment
Performance Tuning for Linux(R) Servers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 131

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