Improve Employee Engagement - 3 Easy Steps

It doesn't take carrots or sticks to improve employee engagement. If you want to improve employee engagement at your company or business then you are going to have to do the three things that your employees want, and none of them have to do with money.

Your Employees Want To Achieve
If you place a bunch of flees in a bowl and set it on the table, within a few seconds all the fleas would jump out. If you take that same bowl of fleas but this time put a lid on it for 10 minutes and then take the lid off. You will be surprised to find out that not one flea will jump out. Why? Because the fleas have learned it is no use to try because they just can't escape.

It's sad but this can happen to your employees. If you don't have a system or mechanism for them to achieve and to become more than what they are, they will quite trying. They will become totally and completely disengaged. So, step 1 in improving employee engagement is open up avenues for achievement.

Your Employees Want Appreciation
Jimmy Johnson (head football coach of the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins) use to make it a point to have one complement and one suggestion for improvement, for each of his players every day. There are over 50 players on a football team. But he felt that this was critically important. Why? Because your employees want their hard work to be recognized. Make a point to notice what your employees are doing and complement them at every opportunity, but make sure the compliments are sincere or otherwise you will appear patronizing. Step 2 to improving employee engagement is to show appreciation for their work.

Your Employees Want Their Work To Mean Something
Nobody likes to think that they spent all day at a job, and all their efforts were for nothing. If your employees think their jobs don't matter then you are not going to get their best efforts no matter what you try.

Change their perceptions of their job. It may be as easy as not referring to them as employees but by a different name that will give their jobs meaning. At Disney, all of their workers are called Cast Members. At Starbucks everyone is a Partner. At a mess hall in Iraq (cafeteria for soldiers) the staff was charged with building troop morale and not just being a cook. At Zappos the call center is challenged with creating WOW moments. Your company probably does something that is important in one fashion or another. If you didn't you wouldn't be in business. Find that one something and wear it like a badge of honor. Step 3 to improving employee engagement is to find something to give your workers meaning in their work.