Our View on Engagement: Employee-Led, Leader Supported, Organization Enabled
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. It was originally constructed between 1987 and 1991 and is a 3.14-acre structure built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system, or vivarium. It remains the largest closed system ever created.
An excellent example of creating a sustainable environment!
If you want better employee engagement what better way than to actively engage your employees in that effort. For nearly two decades organizations have been measuring their employee engagement through annual or biannual surveys with the goal of enhancing their employee’s engagement. The unfortunate reality? Most organizations fall short in their efforts of increasing sustained, overall employee engagement.
Often turning engagement survey results into change becomes a task or project delegated to the already overburdened Human Resources organization or front-line leaders to manage and report back on how they will positively impact the engagement scores. However, enhancing employee engagement is not a task or project to be managed. Employee engagement is core to sustaining top-tier performance and creating a performance environment where talent can grow and thrive.
Our experience has shown that if you want sustained employee engagement, then you must actively engage your employees, not just HR and or leadership in these efforts. Create an environment where employee engagement is employee-led, leader supported and organizationally enabled.
Organizations enable engagement by connecting everyone to a clear organizational purpose supported by clear organizational values. Organizations enable engagement by chartering and supporting employee led teams that develop recommendations which turn engagement survey results into enhanced employee engagement.
Leaders support enhanced engagement by evolving from top-down planning, directing, controlling and managing people and processes, to inspiring, enabling, facilitating and developing employee performance, accountability and change. Leaders should create and support the environments for active employee engagement and cultivate a lead where you are performance environment, not attempt to manage their people and activities.
And finally, develop the environment where employees don’t just submit an annual survey and wait for something to happen. If you want sustained engagement, engage them at the very start. They can assist in promoting participation in the survey and then taking the lead in making recommendations to turn the feedback into change. We have seen incredible results when organizations intentionally enable and support employee-led engagement actions and activities.
If you want better employee engagement, try engaging your employees. We know you will be amazed.
For more information on ELO employee engagement contact us or send us an email to info@cornerstonelearning.com.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
