4 Tips for Engaging Employees
Written by Gwen Thomas Wednesday, October 07 2009
In today’s challenging economy how can you inspire and empower your employees as well as maintain your competitive advantage? Here are four tips to help you succeed in managing today’s challenging workplace.
1. Connect with the Emotional Side
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins shares that in tough times leaders should confront the most brutal facts of the business’s current reality, no matter what it may be, and retain the faith that the business will prevail in the end, despite the difficulties.
Engage employees in what is going on at the company, what the goals are, and show them how they connect to the long-term goals. Make sure they know what matters the most for the coming months.
2. Find your Master Motivators
These are the people who genuinely make their workers feel good about what they do. They're very clear on the fact that everyone has a different definition of success; they find what is meaningful to a worker, emotionally as well as rationally, and connect them to it in an individual way.
More than climbing up the corporate ladder or making more money, success is tied to family or community or something else in the employees’ personal lives.
There's a master motivator at your company who is taking care of her people by focusing them on the work they have to do each and every day and finding a way to make them feel good about it.
3. MBWA (Management by Walking Around)
Walk around your workplace/department daily, find one person who is doing her job exceptionally well, and tell the person how much you appreciate the contribution she is making.
Be genuine in expressing your interest; and then quickly move on so it doesn’t seem as though you are micromanaging.
Refresh your meetings. Each week, have team members write down up to three good things they helped make happen. Then at the next meeting, have each member share their accomplishments with the group. These accomplishments can also be a group effort.
4. Work Smarter by Going Green
It’s worth exploring the energy-saving utilization of remote technology to operate more efficiently in terms of business travel.
The use of tools such as phone and video conferencing can reach from the local office environment to an employee who is working from home to a client site. This generates savings on travel for meeting with colleagues in different locations as well as journeys to and from work.
Recent research reveals how this alternative can increase productivity, reduce business expenses, and yield solid benefits for the business.
Employees might appreciate this flexibility. Clients and customers might genuinely appreciate this alternative as a way of managing their costs. Their interest in virtual meetings might surprise you
Gwen Thomas is president & CEO of HR Now!, a Georgia-based corporation located in Atlanta and specializing in human resources compliance, work force, and supplier diversity solutions. Thomas has more than 20 years experience in human resources including managing human resources functions for a division of General Motors Corp.
