One Size Fits All Strategies – Don’t Work, Never Did

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Sorry, but for some time now I’ve, excuse the French, had the shits …

…with the level of thinking around employee engagement research.

Recently I’ve been frustrated with some comments regarding staff retention on LinkedIn groups and Google Alerts.

Generally I’m concerned with the level of employee engagement thought leadership being bandied around the corporate world.

I reckon if I read the question: “What engages employees?” one more time …. I think I’ll have to harm myself

The Answer?

Short answer to the question anyway, is:   It depends on the individual

Longer answer to the question is:  Traditionally we do our employee engagement research, and then develop an organisational engagement plan (OEP) to improve engagement based on the findings.

But this shot gun approach to engagement initiatives is only OK as a starting point and unfortunately, only one piece of the effective engagement solutions puzzle. Relying solely on this umbrella approach, based on ‘an average employee’ (who don’t exist anyway) is why so many retention strategies have been flawed over recent years and haven’t led to any real meaningful improvements in engagement in most organisations.

P.S – If you have ‘an average employee’, please introduce me to them, I’d love to meet them.

Everyone Is Different

The missing link to effective engagement is understanding that everyone is different and therefore motivated and engaged by different drivers. The good news is that there are fundamentally only 7 key engagement drivers that you need to focus on.

They key is Employee Activated Engagement (EAE) – the self-responsibility approach to engagement. This ‘inside out’ approach is the opposite to the current showering them with gifts and benefits ‘outside in’ approach which can create the ‘whinge entitlement culture’.

The more you give, the more employees expect.  Take the benefits away from staff and they will whinge (even if they aren’t using the benefits). For example, one large financial client of ours was spending over $100K per year on weekly fruit bowls for staff. Were they being used… no!  But take the fruit bowls away and look out!

The Engagement Missing Link

So the missing link to effective engagement is Employee Activated Engagement (EAE). So, Step 1: Get individual employees responsible and clear on what motivates them.

The challenge is that most employees know what doesn’t engage them; fewer know what really does engage them. If employees don’t know, the default driver simply becomes “give me more money”.  Also if employees don’t know what engages them, their people leader and organisation is stuffed! If employees don’t know what they want how can we effectively engage them?

The Power of Knowing What Really Engages Individuals

Take for example Sally – her manager Mike had a coffee chat (Stay Interview) with her using the Engagement Drivers Card System (EDCS). In 15 minutes, just by identifying her top 3 motivational engagement drivers, Mike was able to make some small adjustments in team responsibilities that put a smile back on Sally’s face!

Out of the 7 drivers, Sally’s top motivators were Job Fulfilment, Leadership and Opportunity. Mike discovered that Sally enjoyed detailed work, like proof reading and enjoyed being involved with company promotional literature. Mike’s assistant, who normally handled these things, was drained by these activities and didn’t really have time for them anyway.

The Win-Win

Mike gave these projects to Sally, which gave her more job fulfilment and she felt rewarded doing something she was good at and liked. With Mike’s encouragement she also had some opportunities to join meetings that involved promotional issues. Mike also found out that being kept informed and appreciated was important to Sally and he found it easy to let her know when relevant meetings were coming up and also to appreciate the work that she was doing. All of her top motivator scores went up as did her job satisfaction, productivity and engagement!

Simple Tools - You’ll Be Amazed!

• Try having a 15 min coffee chat ‘Stay Interview” with one of you team.
• Explore why they like working with your organisation
• See if you can together identify their top 3 motivators (engagement drivers)
• Ask them.. Q: What would need to change for each motivator to be improved for them?
• Create their very own Personal Engagement Plan (PEP)

With engagement, the smallest things can make the biggest difference – 15 minutes is only 1% of your day!

If you need some simple tools for this check out the Engagement Drivers Card System (EDCS)