In previous articles we covered off the issue of ‘Who is responsible for engagement in your organisation?’. Ultimately everyone needs to be responsible for engagement – from the CEO to HR, to people leaders, right through to all employees.  If this is the case, then the key is to make the implementation of engagement and motivation as easy as possible for everyone, with a simple dialogue and consistent tools.

Clarity Creates Control

Unless everyone understands what creates engagement, then organisationally or individually it can’t be properly managed. If engagement be can’t managed then neither can productivity and performance and therefore we all just become victims of a culture of untapped workforce potential, or even worse, disengaged, year in and year out.

Making Complexity Simple

So we need to bring order to the engagement complexity we have seen over the last few decades. We need to take the science of engagement research and use it as the foundation of an elegant art form that sustainably empowers implementation by everyone throughout the organisation.

Now this may sound complex, especially when a seemingly endless array of human behaviour is involved, but again, the key is making it simple and easy to implement.

The Sophistication is in making the Engagement Knowledge & Implementation Gap Easy to close

1. Close the Knowledge Gap

• Simplify employee engagement research as it all boils down to only 7 drivers, so make them a common organisational vocabulary
• Educate your people leaders first, then employees
• Give people leaders and individual employees easy to use tools

1. Close the Implementation Gap

• Make everyone responsible by providing the systems to stitch engagement and motivation into process e.g ‘Motivational Performance Reviews (MPR)’ or Stay Interviews
• Give people leaders the tools to create Team Engagement Plans (TEP) and become more locally empowered
• Give individual employees the tools  to create Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) and increase self-responsibility

Please post your thoughts and comments below.

More on programs for people leaders and employees on knowledge and tools and systems for implementation

Join Ian Hutchinson, Employee Activated Engagement expert and author of ‘People Glue: Engagement & Retention Solutions That Stick!’ for this recent 55 mins webinar.

To register for forthcoming LIVE webinars click here.

Please leave your comments below and let’s keep the conversation going.

Also to join future LIVE webinars click here.

Exit Interviews: Why they Leave?

Now, exit interviews are okay, but fundamentally, whether it’s true or not, people are going to say they are leaving for more: A. Money, B. Opportunity or C. Both.  They won’t say “I’m leaving cos my manager was a dickhead… and Oh, could I have a reference please!”

So instead of wasting money and everyone’s time doing exit interviews, a far more effective approach is to do ‘Stay Interviews’.

Stay Interview: Why they Stay?

Asking “What are the top three reasons why you like working here?” is much more useful than finding out why they are leaving, as the horse has already bolted. So our advice, get rid of the exit interviews once and for all and reinvest your time and effort into stay interviews!

The Accumulated Benefits

So why do Stay interviews rule? Because they are the equivalent of doing individual engagement research, the same as doing Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) and Motivational Performance Reviews (MPR).

Simple Tips To Get Started

• Organise a casual 15-30 min coffee chat with one of your team.

• Explore why they like working with the organisation

• See if you can together identify their top 3 motivators (engagement drivers) – the Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS) are ideal for this.

• Ask them questions. What would need to change for each motivator to be improved for them?

• Using the info from your discussion create a Personal Engagement Plan (PEP) with them

• Schedule another check-in for 3-6 months’ time

Why not give it a go – you’ll be amazed at the outcomes

Why not do it with the whole team now – then you can create a Team Engagement Plan (TEP)?

Add to the discussion!

Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

Is this mindset about engagement familiar to you?:

Current thinking (Quarter 1):

“I’ll start looking at effective engagement and motivation strategies that increase performance and productivity after our engagement research is completed”

3-6 Months Later (Quarter 2):

“The engagement research has been done and I’m wading through it to identify potential areas to focus on”

6-9 Months Later (Quarter 3):

“I’ve now identified strategic areas that need attention to improve engagement”

Oops! (Quarter 4):

“It’s time to do the next round of engagement research!”

Top 5 Problems with this scenario:

1.  Nothing really changes and organisations become paralysed by inaction or run the risk of perpetuating the same old ineffective engagement strategies year in, year out.
2.  Most of the time and effort is spent on the research and very little time is spent on the most important thing – effective engagement, motivation and productivity initiatives.
3.  Employees don’t see any immediate results from their feedback in your engagement survey – so they can feel they weren’t really being listened to
4.  Employees’ mindset can become “Why bother doing this year’s engagement survey – management doesn’t really care anyway”
5.  Engagement surveys can sometimes just become meaningless administrative lip service leading to further disengagement rather than increased motivation

Top 3 Solutions:

1.  Have the gun loaded:  Example:

• Speak to a range of experts and formulate some universally beneficial  initiatives ready to go straight after your engagement research comes out

2. Get some quick wins: Example:

• Leadership Programs to teach managers how to motivate and engage their teams easily with simple  tools, which collectively allow them to create Team Engagement Plans (TEP) and Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) with their people.

3. Provide strategic initiatives that have universal benefits.  Example:

• Employee [Activated] Engagement. This self-responsibility approach to productivity and performance has been proven to allow individuals to improve their own engagement by at least 70%

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Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

Many cultures are becoming jaded by the ‘E’ word – ‘Engagement’. Maybe it’s the general organisational population that’s getting tired of the ‘Engagement’ word because it is over used.

Engagement = Motivation

Fair enough, Engagement is very employer-centric.  “How can we engage you more (for the betterment of profitability)?” some skeptical employees might suggest. Perhaps consider using ‘Motivation’ or ‘Talent Driver’ as they is fundamentally the same thing, but more employee-centric.

Repackaging the Benefits

Maybe you are not a sceptic, as you understand the win-win for employee and employer. The benefits of engagement clearly for employer are productivity, performance and profitability. The benefits for employee are feeling happier, fulfilled, satisfied, balanced and more motivated using their strengths (rather than drained using their weaknesses)

Engagement needs to be repackaged and repositioned and it is up to leadership. We are all leaders, so it is up to us.

What is Leadership Anyway?

Answer: Leadership is all about maximising productivity and performance.  As we are all leaders, we should be obsessed with increasing productivity and performance positively through motivation.

So why not get greater buy-in from the whole organisation by having all leaders start conversations about what MOTIVATES their people, rather than what engages them?

Leadership Challenges:

1. Most leaders don’t have the skills, tool or resources to have those conversations around motivation
2. Most leaders aren’t psychologists, coaches or counsellors
3. Most employees know what demotivates them, but most don’t know what truly motivates them
4. If most employees don’t know what motivates them, leaders have no chance of properly motivating their team

Good News: The Solutions is Employee-Activated

If any of these issues resonate with your organisation and you want to explore effective Employee Activated solutions, then please join us for a complimentary live webinar recording or check out some of the solutions here or give us a call for a free consultation.

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Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

With employers failing to get cut-through with traditional notions of what engages employees, Human Capital Magazine’s Chief Editor, Iain Hopkins, recently interviewed ‘Employee Activated Engagement’ expert Ian Hutchinson, Chief Engagement Officer of LifebyDesign.com.au, who says it’s time for a fresh take on engagement.

In Part 1 of this interview Ian Hutchinson answered questions from Human Capital Magazine such as:

What is the problem with existing models of engagement?

You mention the top-down approach – what’s the alternative?

Now, Part 2 continues:

Human Capital: What are Life by Design’s ‘7 Key Motivational Engagement Drivers’?

Ian Hutchinson: We’ve boiled it down to seven key drivers, which we present as a set of cards (Engagement Driver Card System). Each card has a key word on it (Leadership, Purpose, Reward, Opportunity, Relationships, Job Fulfilment and Work Life Balance). Simplifying it down to seven means that right across the organisation you can have this simple, but powerful conversation around what drives people. People leaders can then understand that there are seven things that engage and motivate their people, but everyone is going to be different in terms of the order of what those are.

For individual employees, they can see there are seven key motivators that really drive them at work. When talking to employees we call them motivators; when talking to HR or people leaders we call them engagement drivers – but they are basically the same thing. One is employee centric, the other is employer centric. Employees are happy to discuss what motivates them – we present them with seven, and ask them to pick their top three for the next 12 months.

HC: So they can be used to kick-start a conversation?

IH: Absolutely. This is engagement 101. The reason most people leaders don’t do that is because they don’t have the tools, skills or resources. They think they are not psychologists or coaches or counsellors, and in the past they’ve been burnt by sitting down with employees and asking, ‘what do you want moving forward?’ Fifty per cent of them won’t know, and the other 50% will probably have a crack at it and will probably get it wrong, thinking it’s either money or opportunity, and it could be some of the other drivers.

HC: Does this approach make it more difficult for managers to manage everyone’s expectations?

IH: It should be happening anyway. Everyone in my team is motivated by a different set of drivers. To get the most out of everyone it’s important to know what everyone’s top motivational drivers are. Once you’ve uncovered what the top three are, it’s a matter of keeping on top of them with development plans (PEP). That’s why we’ve created www.meCentral.com, with a dashboard that managers can use simply and easily to keep track of their team. It’s almost counter-intuitive that you think it takes more work, but actually a 15-minute coffee chat can save you weeks of time.

MeCentral.com is a whole platform to help employees take responsibility with career development, work-life balance, personal finances and other key areas such as motivational drivers. The people leader has a simple window that they can look into showing what the employees’ top motivators are and what the employee believes they would like to do about it, and how they are ranking (in a simple traffic light system). It’s all about employee activated engagement (EAE).

HC: So is it an urban myth that HR is responsible for engagement?

IH: A lot of traditional companies will point to HR because they do the research, so they think HR should know what the problems are and how to fix them. We would say that everyone is responsible for engagement. HR is responsible, sure, for doing an organisational engagement plan(OEP) ; but what’s more effective are leaders being responsible for doing team engagement plans (TEP); and what’s even more effective is getting employees responsible for their own engagement plans (PEP).

For the full PDF copy of this interview email us at info@LifebyDesign.com.au

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Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

With employers failing to get cut-through with traditional notions of what engages employees, Human Capital Magazines Chief Editor, Iain Hopkins, recently interviewed ‘Employee Activated Engagement’ expert Ian Hutchinson, Chief Engagement Officer of LifebyDesign.com.au, who says it’s time for a fresh take on engagement.

Human Capital: In your view what is the problem with existing models of engagement?

Ian Hutchinson: A lot of organisations have been plugging away, doing their engagement research every year, but many organisations spend 80% of their time on the research and only 20% on the implementation.

Many are getting frustrated – they’re trying to do the right thing but aren’t really getting cut-through. We’re slipping down the global engagement rankings because a lot of organisations are trying to do the same old, same old and using the umbrella approach, the concept that one-size-fits-all. It hasn’t really ever worked. HR has been limited with time and budget, and therefore that’s the only paradigm seen: we’ve done our research, let’s put in some broad brushstroke umbrella solutions where the weak points are, and hope that’s going to keep the tribe relatively satisfied. That’s the top-down approach.

Organisations also tend to shower people with benefits and gifts in a mad hope to try to engage and motivate them, and what that’s done is create this whinge entitlement culture, where employees are becoming conditioned to doing more with less, but what are you going to give me to relieve my pain? By giving them more and more benefits it creates this spoilt whinge entitlement culture – what are you going to give me next Christmas? It actually disenfranchises them; it’s like an only child, the more you do for them, in the hope to show your love, the more you just create a spoilt brat.

HC: You mention the top-down approach – what’s the alternative?

Ian Hutchinson: The approach should be bottom-up. That’s the approach where everyone is an individual, and broad brushstroke initiatives don’t always work. Instead of doing organisational engagement plans (OEP), we need to do personal engagement plans (PEP) and get individual employees responsible for understanding what engages and motivates them.

This is psychologically one of the major obstacles and problems of why engagement hasn’t worked: employees know what they don’t want – that’s easy for them to work out – but few know what they do want. If employees don’t know what motivates and engages them, HR and managers have bucklies. Not only that, if employees don’t know what they want, the default driver usually becomes ‘give me more money’, which is the most expensive and ineffective way of trying to engage and motivate people.

What we’ve found is 70% of engagement can be improved by individual employees themselves – they’re just not aware of it yet.

Part 2 of this interview will be published in future blogs, but for the full PDF copy of this interview email us at info@LifebyDesign.com.au

Add to the discussion!

Please leave your comments, thoughts and questions below

Employee engagement research can be a waste of time and money if you don’t understand the pitfalls.

So what’s wrong with traditional employee engagement research?

Problematic Assumption #1

Taking the general common denominator approach to engagement results will improve research scores

Flaw #1

Only focussing on umbrella engagement solutions or Organisational Engagement Plans (OEP) can help some employees but not all.

Example:

An organisation’s engagement research suggests generally Leadership, Opportunity and Relationships need to be improved throughout the culture and therefore initiatives are put in place. This approach may be a useful starting point for some employees in general. But what if your top talent is motivated by the Job Fulfilment, Reward and Work Life Balance drivers and these factors are not getting satisfied?

Improvement Strategy  #1

One solution doesn’t fit everyone, so focus more on individual engagement solutions – PEP (especially for key talent) more than global organisational engagement strategies.

Strategy:

Use the Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS) or platforms such as meCentral.com  for Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) and Team Engagement Plans (TEP)

Problematic Assumption #2

Focus on the weakest scoring areas in the engagement research to improve research scores

Flaw  #2

Just because an organisational area isn’t scoring well doesn’t mean it is an important motivational driver to individual employees.

Example:

An organisation doesn’t have a strong purpose beyond just making money. So they invest time and money into improving the ‘Purpose’ driver (see the book ‘People Glue’ for a more detailed description of each of the engagement drivers). The reality may be that purpose just isn’t that important to most employees, even though it isn’t scoring well. So why waste time and money on this driver?

Improvement Strategy  #2

Understand first what is important to employees before implementing misguided strategies.

Strategy:

Use the Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS) or platforms such as meCentral.com for Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) and Team Engagement Plans (TEP). meCentral.com also has motivational check ins, that quickly identify the most important drivers to focus on so each employee can improve their own engagement.

I don’t know anyone who likes performance reviews – they have become an annual pain in the backside for most employees and managers.

 When performance reviews are not done well they can become a waste of time for everyone.

Road Map

Traditional performance reviews are very employer-centric. They focus on cascading organisational goals down to an employee’s role in achieving specific requirements for the business. Performance reviews are like a road map, “Get from A to B. Now what milestones have you met and how far along the road have you got?” The result, a smack or a carrot.

Typically Performance Reviews  lack any discussions around the ‘rocket fuel’ used to get the individual along the road map.

Rocket Fuel

Almost every time, the missing link in a performance review is what ‘rocket fuel’ is being used for the employee along the road map? Understanding your peoples’ top motivators and helping fulfil them is this rocket fuel and vital to performance.

Map x Fuel = Performance

We need to reboot our thinking on performance reviews and super charge them with a motivational element.

The flaw in performance reviews is the motivational aspect – the missing rocket fuel. Traditional performance reviews are old school. What is needed for effective achievement of targets and the improvement of engagement are ‘Motivational Performance Reviews’ (MPRs) which have a Personal Engagement Plan (PEP)  or ‘Stay Interview’ component blended in with them.

Question: How do we make performance reviews really improve performance?

Answer: Make them ‘Motivational’ Performance Reviews

Accumulated Benefits

So bring Performance Reviews to life and start doing ‘Motivational Performance Reviews’ (MPR) simply and easily with any of these motivational engagement tools:

• Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) or Stay interviews
• Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS)
• meCentral.com

The accumulated benefits are that they all overlap synergistically creating the outcome of a more engaged, motivated, performing and productive workforce.  As mentioned previously, they can take as little as 15 minutes to do.

The issue is, they are easy to do, but they are easier not to do. Considering the difference they can make, what will you choose?

Well, it depends on the individual … Enter Personal Engagement Plans (PEP).

 If employers don’t know what engages and motivates their people, then they can’t effectively engage them.  As everyone is different, we need to take the “workforce of one” philosophy and treat employees as individuals, not as a team or as an organisation.

 PEP’s are by far the most effective way to engage and motivate people simply and easily – hands down!

Personal Engagement Plan (PEP) Case study

 Take for example Sally – her manager Mike had a Personal Engagement Plan (PEP) coffee chat 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 fulfillment, 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!

 Doing a PEP can take as little as 15 minutes to do with tools such as an Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS). PEP’s can even be automated with motivation and engagement systems such as meCentral.com.

 Simple Tips – To Get Started

• Organise a casual  15-30 min coffee chat PEP with one of your team.
• Explore why they like working with the organisation
• See if you can together identify their top 3 motivators (engagement drivers)
• Ask them questions. What would need to change for each motivator to be improved for them?
• Create a Personal Engagement Plan (PEP) using tools such as Engagement Driver Card System (EDCS) or meCentral.com
• Schedule another check-in for 3-6 months’ time
• You’ll be amazed at the outcomes
• Why not schedule one for each of your team now – then you can create an effective Team Engagement Plan (TEP)?

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