How Do We Keep and Maintain An Actively Engaged Team Of Employees?

An email that came across my desk last week had me doing a quick doubletake.

Because the information contained in the email was frightening.

The email read:

“Recent Gallup research has shown that in Australia only twenty four percent of employees are engaged at work, and that a staggering sixty percent are not engaged and another sixteen percent of employees are actively disengaged.”

As a business owner, how do these statistics relate to your business?

As a customer, how do these statistics relate to businesses that you frequent and do business with?

Clearly, the degree of engagement, or DISENGAGEMENT of employees seriously impacts on the success of each and every business, because the attitude of employees at work impacts and influences the relationships that those employees have with their co-workers, their employers, and their customers.

According to the email, many employees surveyed by Gallup acknowledged that they could be up to twenty five percent more productive. [How do you measure that??]

The email continued:

“Gallup reports that the top two things employees blame for holding them back are poor management and lack of motivation.”

How can we address this “lack of motivation”?

Why is there a lack of motivation at all?

When I was working part time jobs while at school and at university, I was always motivated at work to do the best that I could do so that my employer would value me as an employee and see the benefit of having me as an employee in his organisation.

However, one thing I have found was that the motivations that I had back then and kept up throughout my working life are not shared by all people in the workforce.

Some people in the workforce seem very happy just putting in minimum effort at work and simply just trying to keep out of the boss’s way…

Obviously, the aim of business owners choosing employees is to try to employ only the right type of people and not to employ the wrong type of people.

The trouble is, that despite our best intentions as employers, the wrong types of people do, and will slip under our guard.

And we accidentally employ them.

So what should we do then?

What can we do to increase our levels of employee engagement within our business?

Can we even do that?

The email went on to suggest a few strategies for encouraging staff engagement. These were:

Build a culture in your business that is psychologically safe for employees and where it is OK for them to ask questions – where all staff members can speak openly about their issues and concerns including how they are feeling towards their jobs and especially if they are feeling bored
Hire for potential rather than proficiency. And hire for attitude – there is so much to learn from inexperienced staff with great attitudes because they look at things from a totally different perspective.
Keep your teams or working groups small to create higher levels of engagement and to foster greater innovation and creativity. Remember, your business’s competitive edges are more likely to come from within.
Provide context and meaning to your team for all of the tasks they need to complete – ensure that each employee knows exactly why each of the things they have to do are important, as well as who that matters to and why it matters. This will help them to keep focused on the end goal.
Set challenges for your team members without overworking them – vary up the nature of their work, rather than the amount.

Ultimately, being a business owner, and an employer, is difficult.

It’s not an easy task.

If it was easy, then everybody would be an employer.

But they aren’t.

At work, keeping your team engaged in valuable work can be a real challenge and requires a deliberate approach.

But, it will be worth it.

An engaged team will be more productive, much more creative and much more fun to be around.

For you. For your other employees. And for your customers.

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