Much has been written about worker engagement, imploring leaders to ignite this behavior within their employees. Sometimes the simple answer of ‘implementing better communication’ glosses over the underlying deeper issues at hand.
We’ve learned that many behaviors are the result of habit.
To change a behavior, you have to over-lay old habits with new routines. This takes time and effort, and a willingness to grow and change.
And we know any change can be fearful, not just for those who have been in a particular job for years, but for anyone.
So each step has to be carefully planned, communicated, accepted, and instigated.
Here are 5 key ways to help leaders ignite worker engagement:
1. De-stress
The basis of most non-engagement, failure, and non-success is stress. Stress comes in many forms and infringes upon performance.
This may come from external personal situations, the physicality of a workstation, a physical ailment, or the actual work environment where workers may experience bullying or harassment.
Often, though, it comes from unresolved emotional issues carried forward throughout life that the individual brings to their job.
The type of stress that infringes upon and affects workers’ personal external lives and work environment most, and which generally is overlooked because it appears to be “too hard” to define, is this unresolved emotional stress.
Because stress response invokes a chemical reaction throughout the body, this can contribute to a lack of judgment, impaired communication, and a loss of clarity and focus. It is not a case of ‘better communication.’
One of the first steps leaders can take to help employee engagement is to instigate stress resolution programs into their basic training.
2. Increase Energy
Employees need to have a certain amount of energy to complete tasks and to think creatively, and come up with problem-solving solutions.
Energy can be drained merely by sitting at a desk for long periods of time without a break. This cuts off the flow of creative juices and leads to inefficiencies.
Workers will then take far too long to complete tasks and keep repeating unnecessary steps because they lack focus and energy.
Energy can be depleted by internalizing feelings of being undervalued by the employer. As soon as the work goes into a negative state or stress of any kind, cortisol is emitted.
This then takes time and energy for the body to get back into balance.
These types of stresses are not apparent and are therefore overlooked. Research indicates workers feel their employers do not care about their mental health and well-being.
If this is the case, then the workforce is suffering an enormous blight.
Leaders can help increase an employee’s energy by instigating short doses of exercise programs that can be done in minutes per session at their workstations throughout the day. Movement and stretching will help here.
The objective is to break the nexus of what is currently being done and to create opportunities to allow for the creative juices to flow. However, the underlying feeling of lack of self-worth needs to be addressed separately.
3. Being in the Correct Role
Exceptional employees who are good at their work, love what they do, and seem to thrive no matter what, and who are engaged and love coming to work are in the minority.
It has been estimated in a recent study only 13% of workers fall into that category.
Why is this so?
It is because they have hit on a job role or function that fully satisfies their innate skills, talents, and abilities. If they utilize these innate skills at least 80% of the time in their job, the job will feel easy and satisfying.
If it is the other way around and they find themselves utilizing only 20% of their innate skills and talents, then this is where stress comes into play, and there will be a mismatch between job role and the employee’s skill set, and these workers will struggle daily in that job.
They will be unhappy and disengaged. Leaders need to be mindful of this and take measures to redefine roles to assign employees to the right tasks and vice versa.
Job descriptions and redefinition may need to become a priority.
4. Passion
Workers are engaged when they are passionate about what they are doing.
Have you, as a leader, take the time to find out what your workers are passionate about? Or tried to instigate some of these interests and activities within the workplace?
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Scale, people eventually get to that stage where they have overcome their most basic and intermediate needs of survival and safety and then want to self-actualize and make a contribution to society or their immediate community in some way.
One of the easiest ways to do that is for the company to foster engagement in charitable activities and to have the workers involved in searching out and planning what is available and what would be a good match for the charity and the company.
This will benefit both the giver and the receiver.
5. Purpose
Each of us has a purpose in life, and there could well be any number of purposes for individuals to take. The purpose of work for many disengaged workers may well be purely working for the money to make the dollars to pay the bills.
If this is happening, there will be a sense of withdrawal or, in some cases, a major disconnect between a person’s work and home life.
One will be a refuge, and the other may appear to be a hostile place. If this is happening, it will ignite a lack of passion. There will also be no commonality between an individual’s work purpose and the company’s vision and goals.
Leaders need to be aware of this and take time to communicate the corporation’s vision and goals, and purpose and to be able to connect individually with each person so that they feel that they are a valued member of the team.
Workers need to feel their contribution is not only necessary in order for the company to thrive and succeed but also that they, the worker, feels validated, heard, and valued.
One way to do that, especially in group meetings, is to make sure that every person has equal opportunity and equal time to put forth their idea and opinions and not be fearful of judgment.
The leader must make sure that everyone feels heard and has equal time to express their opinion, even though they may not use it every time in every meeting. This way, individuals will feel validated.
Change management consultants may well be getting this back-to-front. They suggest implementing better communication systems first when really, they need to be resolving the underlying stress issues that create the disconnect and disengagement in the first place.
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Boost Success in All Areas of Your Life', tackles her favorite topic: how to move from stress to success. She now consults corporations, transforming stress and mental health issues into well being, one step at a time.