Would You Follow Your CEO Into Battle?

Would You Follow Your CEO Into Battle? BLOG: Author: Shane York | Source: HCI | Published: July 12, 2012 For those of you who think employee engagement is just another program to slash when budgets or other circumstances prevail, you’re making one big, costly mistake. Employee engagement is life changing. It generates financial and organizational performance, it creates a culture that attracts and retains talent, drives innovation and customer growth, and it doesn’t have to cost a dime. Today’s engagement strategies have evolved into key elements that actually generate financial growth. By providing employees with autonomy to work on projects that interest them and giving them more collaborative and networking opportunities to develop new ideas, you not only motivate and excite your workforce; you are driving business goals. What does it take to develop a culture of engaged employees? Give them what they want…what we all want! Leadership that is both transparent and communicative - leaders with integrity who encourage trust and are able to connect employees directly to their contribution towards the organization. A career development and learning plan that adds useful skills and allows employees to support and actively contribute to the learning process. A culture with values we identify with and are proud to represent. Here’s a question: How much do you really trust your direct manager and CEO? Would you hesitate to follow them into battle? Do you have confidence and faith in their strategies, but more importantly do you believe in them enough to put everything on the line? That may be extreme, but there are many people who would say yes, and honestly I’m one of them. I also know every member of my team feels the same way. Establishing trust, allowing for creative freedom, communicating our value to the company, and providing transparency into the workings of the organization brings the kind of loyalty you can’t buy with a raise or promotion. Being human doesn’t hurt either. At the end of the day we’re all “people” with families and obligations; being appreciated and treated with respect by the people who lead is the very first step to establishing trust and engaging your workforce. Everyone aspires to more… doing more and being more. Empowering your workforce with the skills they need to succeed, meaning the skills they want, is a hat trick that works every time. When employees feel they’re growing and becoming more valuable to the organization, they become inspired and energy levels increase - they want to take on more work because they’re personally involved in the success of the business. People also want to connect with an organization they’re proud to work for, organizations that do good philanthropic work, or connect with the local community, provide services and products that are deemed the best, or are rewarding to be associated with in some way. Feeling good about your organization leads to feelings of pride and gratification, this attitude is critical to so many organizations as it’s also communicated to your customers and has a direct connection to client satisfaction and retention. What about disengaged workers? These are workers who are already checked-out or are just keeping their job until the next one comes around. Keeping the disengaged on staff is much more costly than most organizations realize. The Gallup Organization estimates the low productivity of this group costs US companies between $243 and $270 billon dollars annually. This makes sense when you think about the Conference Board study, which found that highly engaged employees outperform their disengaged colleagues by 20-28%. A study by Serota Consulting also found the share price of organizations with an engaged workforce rose by an average of 16% versus the industry average of just 6%, so clearly an engaged workforce equals good business outcomes. The disengaged will cost you more than money; these workers try their best to also demotivate other employees. You know these people – the ones who complain and are constantly negative, trying their best to make everyone as unhappy as they feel. Indeed misery loves company and no one wants people they can commiserate with more than the disengaged. Can you save the disengaged? Probably not, but you can turn around the unhappy workers who are talented, motivated but find themselves in the wrong job or with the wrong manager. Everyone agrees employee engagement is a good thing… but how do you actually pull this off? What are the tools you can use to instill trust, happiness and the organizational performance that comes with employee engagement? How do you kick-start the engagement process while creating a culture of learning and innovation the drives substantial financial returns? Learn from organizations that have been through the fire and come out the other side. The HCI Employee Engagement Conference was designed specifically to offer practical, no-nonsense advice, strategies, trends and brilliant case studies. Listen as the Hay Group explains their research into the disengaged and what you can do to counterbalance this caustic group. Learn from Nike as they outline the tools they use to facilitate an engagement plan designed to engage managers, and to teach them how to better handle high potentials. Get and insider view into how Hulu and IDEO have created a human centered organization based on employee well-being and the wonderful successes they’ve had with this strategy. Join us in Seattle this September 10-12 and hear inspirational case studies, get the strategies, and learn about the most effective tools you can use to drive employee engagement in your organization. Last Comment: July 12, 2012 by Joy Kosta, HCS, SWP | comments (1) Tags: creating places of engagement, engaging & enabling employees for company success, leadership strategy, employee engagement, engaging performance, talent leadership, strategy, 2012 employee engagement conference, conference Login or register to post comments July 12, 2012 Joy Kosta, HCS, SWP says: inspiring blog, Shane... thanks! speaking of inspiring, HCI members may want to check out the approach of the Global Institute for Inspiration http://www.giinspiration.com/ they drill into engagement with a research-based fresh approach, because if one thing matters more than engagement, it's inspiration-- if you've got inspiration, and can design that into your culture and competencies, everything else falls into place! http://www.hci.org/lib/would-you-follow-your-ceo-battle