How do we engage employees when there are cultural and generational differences?

Everyone is an individual, so the key is to focus on the real people behind these stereotypes. People Leaders are the key to helping unlock your workforce potential by focusing on what really counts……to each person.

Here’s Ian Hutchinson on the subject:

To maximise your talented people, your People Leaders need to understand their own drivers and those of their team members. For more information about Engagement Drivers, check out the following resources:

The Ultimate People Glue Employee Engagement Kit (including the 7 driver card system)

People Glue book (by Ian Hutchinson)

Surely money is important? Isn’t that what drives everyone?

Time and time again we see many ill-informed organisations focussing on financial reward as the primary engagement motivator (through incentives such as bonuses). The fact is, once employees feel they are paid fairly for the work they do it comes down to the other six key engagement drivers.

If money is not the primary motivational driver for your employees, then what should you focus on?  For effective motivation and engagement leaders need to better understand people’s unique set of drivers, not assume that money is what does it for them.

In this 90 second video Ian discusses the issue… are you up to date?

For Effective Motivation and Engagement

So instead of implementing top-line initiatives, HR leaders who are serious about improving performance and productivity need to arm their people leaders with the tools and resources to be able to identify their people’s drivers and carry out Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) for them.

In so doing they will get individual employees to understand and be responsible for what engages and motivates them – an approach we call Employee Activated Engagement (EAE).

When To Engage In Changing Times?

We often get asked by our clients: “Do we try and engage and help them before change or once the change has settled down a little?”

People who feel more in control are happier and more engaged for the journey, so it makes sense to help your workforce feel more in control as much as we can, even in times of great change.

Here’s what Ian Hutchinson has to say on this issue in 90 seconds…..

The Key During Change = Promote Self-Responsibility

Self-leadership initiatives are ideal to be run during times of uncertainty and change, as they allow employees to be more resilient and focus on what they can control, rather than what they can’t control during change.

For further corporate success stories and case studies click here

Is this level of research necessary? Throughout our research working with hundreds of organisations and tens of thousands of employees, Life by Design knows that not everyone is motivated by the same engagement drivers.

The 7 Simple Drivers

The good news is that there are fundamentally only seven key motivational engagement drivers. That’s why it is possible to simplify the engagement process, especially once you start to create an Employee-Activated Engagement approach, where everyone starts to take responsibility for their own motivation and engagement.

Watch this video for the 7 motivational engagement drivers …

How do we engage a workforce that’s geographically spread around the country or for that matter the globe? Sure the key in any team is communication and making the most of maintaining relationships through interventions such as conferences and leveraging technology such as video conferencing.

But in the end the key is still understanding and maximising individuals motivational drivers! So make sure you and your people have clarity on what motivates them. If you all have clarity and you know what these important motivators are, then you can tap in meaningfully to each individual employee.

Systems such as www.meCentral.com help maximise the understanding and communication of motivational drivers remotely and have been licensed by organisations right around the world.

Personal Example of Engaging Gen Y From the Other Side of the World

For more on this topic and to hear Ian Hutchinson explain an example of how Life by Design has been engaging a generation Y employee remotely for the last 2 years, watch the 2 minute video below.

From our benchmarking research of human resource directors over the last few years at LifebyDesign.com.au we have found that there are six key obstacles stopping organisations fully realising their workforce potential when it comes to employee engagement:

1. Employee Clarity (78%)

2. Time Poor (70%)

3. Skills, Tools & Resources (66%)

4. Inaction (62%)

5. Leader Buy-in & Commitment (57%)

6. Ineffective Solutions (40%)

Employee clarity creates control and empowerment

Enlightened human resource leaders are becoming increasingly aware that getting employees clear on what engages and motivates them is the first and most important step in intelligently maximising workforce productivity and performance.

The fact is that most employees might know what they don’t want, but fewer know what really does engage and motivate them. Psychologically if employees are not clear then it creates three problems:

1. Employees tend to default to pay and reward as the main motivator and potentially move back to a ‘whinge entitlement’ culture

2. People leaders will have virtually no chance of engaging them

3. Employees can’t take responsibility for their own engagement and motivation because they don’t know where to start

Employee [Activated] Engagement

The good news is that once employee clarity is achieved, 70-90% of engagement and motivation and therefore productivity & performance  can be improved by the employee themselves – it’s just that until now most haven’t had the tools to know how.

For effective employee-driven productivity and employee engagement, a bottom-up approach is the way forward. This approach is employee activated, where everyone is treated as an individual, because broad-brush initiatives are too generic. So instead of implementing top-line initiatives, HR leaders who are serious about improving performance and productivity need to arm their people leaders and employees with the tools and resources to be able to do Personal Engagement Plans (PEP) and in doing so get individual employees to understand and be responsible for what engages and motivates them.

For employee engagement to be effectively implemented a simple system is needed to make the application easy for all levels of the organisation. People leaders increasingly are being asked to do more with less, with demands from their own projects as well as requirements to better motivate and engage their people to maximise productivity.

Keep It Simple!

Life by Design recognise this and have based their engagement process on getting clarity on 7 key motivational drivers – it’s a simple but powerful way to make a difference to an individual and team’s engagement. In this short video, Ian Hutchinson talks about using these 7 simple drivers.

Simple Tools & Resources 

Here is a link to some simple resources, tools and systems:

1. The Ultimate People Glue Employee Engagement Kit (including the 7 driver card system)

2. meCentral.com (systemises employee engagement for everyone)

3. People Glue book (by Ian Hutchinson)

The problem is that many organisations are getting frustrated because engagement solutions they’re implementing aren’t getting effective ‘cut through’ and the desired improvement in employee engagement scores.

Here are some of our favourite employee retention quotes (many of which are from the book People Glue so of course they are our favs):

Leadership Engagement Quotes

1. “Inspired people, inspire people. So to engage and motivate others, first your people leaders need to be inspired and energised.”

2. “Employee engagement is an investment we make for the privilege of future proofing our organisation’s productivity and performance”.

3. “As far as engagement goes, the fish always rots from the head. People leaders need to be the catalyst to improving productivity and performance, but they can’t if they are not first engaged”.

4. “Many people are unmotivated, not because they have a great reason to be, but rather because their leaders have not given them a great reason to be motivated & engaged. Engage and motivate your people to get A’s not Zzzzzz’s”.

5. “Regarding engagement, yes we need to pay people more – pay them more attention!.”

General Engagement Quotes

1.“Your number 1 customers are your employees. Look after your people first and then customers after.”

2. “Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability”

3. “Clarity creates control. Most employees know what they don’t want, fewer know what they really do want.”

4. “If employees don’t know what truly motivates them, their leaders have virtually no chance of motivating them.”

5. “Over 90% of employee engagement, motivation & productivity can be improved by the individual employee themselves – it’s just that until now most haven’t known how.”

For further ideas and solutions go to engagement resources, tools and solutions

If you’d like to use any of these quotes please attribute them to Ian Hutchinson, Chief Engagement Officer, LifebyDesign.com.au and author of People Glue

It’s a reality that some staff may be disengaged and this can cause a major workforce productivity and performance issue.

So how do you re-engage the disengaged? How much energy do you put into re-engaging them? What are the effects of them being disengaged? What do you do if ultimately you can’t engage them?

In this short video, Ian Hutchinson discusses these issues:

For more solutions on how to motivate and engage your workforce go to further resources, tools and programs.

So what’s the simplest thing that can make the biggest difference for your team members around engaging them for better performance?

In 95 seconds Ian Hutchinson shares some of simpliest ideas and most effective engagement tools leaders can use on a daily basis to effectively engage and motivate their people.

Keep It Simple

The concepts are simple but powerful – so you might like to watch it a few times and really listen to what Ian is saying as they can have a profound effect if put it into action!

Resources & Tools

Here is a link to some of the resources, tools and systems mentioned.

1. The Ultimate People Glue Employee Engagement Kit (including the 7 driver card system)

2. meCentral.com (with Personal Engagement Plan & Team Engagement Plan dashboards)

3. People Glue book