As a manager, you naturally want to do the right thing by your employees. But what if your well-intentioned efforts to promote engagement had the opposite effect? Sometimes, we think we’re making things better, when in reality we’re sowing the seeds for further disengagement, simply by not listening to the needs of our employees.
Here are three common ways employers incorrectly try to tackle disengagement – and three ways to rectify them.
1. Ticking boxes
One common mistake employers make is doing something just to tick the ‘training’ box on their end-of-year reports. They know they have to offer training of some kind, so they conduct a random session that might have no relevance to workers’ day-to-day jobs at all.
What you should do instead is train them in something that will benefit them professionally, and interest them personally. Dr Britt Andreatta states that training programs should arise from a partnership between employees and managers; you need to speak with them to work out what they need, and what they see in their future career path.
2. One-size-fits-all
One step better than ticking boxes – but by no means, a great model of employee engagement – is the one-size-fits-all approach. Here, an employer knows what the workplace issue is – maybe it’s that employees are having trouble communicating, managing complex projects, or understanding a thematic area of their work. So they organise training that broadly touches on this topic.
The problem here is that the broad training program does nothing to get into the specifics of the problem that the person, department or company is facing. The manager assumed that training employees in project management skills was enough to solve the problems, without realising:
- How much initial knowledge or experience employees have
- What goals the company wants to address
- How this will benefit everyone in the future
By considering a few critical questions before training, the employer can ensure what their staff learn will be relevant and useful – and ultimately, keep people engaged at work.
3. Using the wrong incentives
Companies often use salary increases to try to motivate their employees. They think that surely with an increase in take-home pay, their workers will be more engaged in their jobs, produce better outcomes and stick around for a longer time.
Salary is only part of the picture when it comes to employee engagement, according to a recent report from Aon Hewitt, 2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement. While a competitive pay packet is important, employees respond more to intrinsic things than how much they earn. Respect, opportunity to learn and being included in decision-making process are much better ways of connecting employees to their jobs.
As an Engage & Grow Coach I’m committed to helping you engage your employees to create productive workforces and happy and satisfied workers. Please get in touch if you’d like some help engaging your team.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
