A tale of two companies.
I used to work for an ad agency filled with employees who genuinely enjoyed coming to work.
I jumped into work, immediately traveling. So several weeks went by before I had a chance to have my Meet The Founder meeting. (The founder of the company prided himself in not only meeting, but genuinely getting to know every employee.)
Finally the day came. I was called by the receptionist and asked to report to the founder’s office. When I knocked on his cubicle (yes, he had a cubicle like every other employee), he asked me to follow him into the conference room.
I was in for the surprise of my life. In the conference room was my immediate supervisor and the head of HR. The founder asked me to take a seat and with the speed and ruthlessness of a ninja, he fired me.
I was stunned. Speechless. As I slowly got my figurative legs under me, I began to ask what had happened. Surely, this was a layoff, not a firing. I had never been fired. He calmly explained that his meetings with new employees were very important to him and I had avoided him for weeks. Yes, but I had been travelling on behalf of the company, I babbled. I went on for another 30 seconds before I saw it.
He was smiling.
I looked at the head of HR. She was smiling. So was my supervisor.
I had been had. Apparently, along with getting to know every employee, the founder was also very proud of his perverse ability to pull off a practical joke.
The tone was set. This was his culture. He often pulled elaborate practical jokes on individuals or even the entire company. And I loved him for it. As did most other employees.
But this initial meeting with employees was not just for show. He demonstrated how much he cared through his actions. He was often seen, several times a day, talking with individuals about their family or their weekend. Benefit packages were second to none. Vacation was far more than any other agency. Employees were given unusual days off to do personal things like holiday shopping. He occasionally packed everyone on buses to take them bowling or shopping or to the casino. None of these were expensive propositions, but the results were extraordinary.
Teams often pitched in to help other teams to complete projects, often with more interesting and collaborative solutions. Employees regularly worked late and on the weekends, without complaint. They spent quality time with their families, but if nothing special was happening at home, you’d find them at their desks on weekends. Not because they had to, but because they love it. Certainly, occasional “bad apples” joined the company, but they were usually short lived because their attitude simply didn’t fit the rest of their co-workers.
I loved this company.
By contrast, I worked for another company with two owners. The partners would agree on culture when face-to-face, but one would undermine the other with employees behind closed doors. It created a fractured culture with two employee factions. One employee even tracked the movements of co-workers and reported how long people had been at lunch or at a doctor’s appointment. Trust eroded exponentially. Employees disengaged, fingers were pointed and teams only worked together peripherally, because they had to not because they wanted to. There was no commitment and, in fact, most employees simply couldn’t wait to go home to escape the chaos.
The first company still thrives and is considered one of the best agencies in the country to work for. The second company closed its doors. Yes, these are extreme examples, but they illustrate how leadership drives employee commitment.
It’s time to find time to care.
According to a Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study of 32,000 employees across the globe, an employee’s immediate supervisor relationship ranked fourth as a predictor of engagement along with leadership, stress/workload and goals.
I’ve actually heard from business leaders: “It’s difficult to find the time to care.” While it was said with tongue firmly planted in cheek, it does ring of truth.
However, just like our customers don’t expect extreme customer experiences, employees don’t necessarily expect Google-inspired perks.
Commitment creates commitment.
It simply takes commitment. Leaders committed to developing true employee engagement by following some simple guidelines including:
- Communicate clear strategy and goals for the organization.
- Ask in-depth questions that uncover the employee’s personal vision, then show them how this aligns with the corporate vision and strategy.
- Provide simple, but clear written expectations of an employee’s performance, each rationalized how these actions contribute to the overall success of the company.
- Make sure its clear how those expectations result in performance-based compensation for the individual and their co-workers. Employees (especially good employees) are motivated by challenges.
- Become a performance coach–offer frequent, accurate and specific feedback about an employee’s strengths over their weaknesses.
- Provide tools and individual direction for employees to define and solve day-to-day problems.
- Empower employees to make the decisions needed to solve those problems, including making mistakes.
- Hire or place employees’ with more emphasis on their passion for a given role than on their skills and knowledge. Skills can be taught.
- Pair talented coworkers into teams and empower them to mentor new workers.
- Develop employees. Every employee should have a “learning” goal in their personal objectives and you should fund trainings and encourage the commitment needed to achieve those goals.
- Be personal, open, honest and transparent with communications. Face-to-face should always win out over emails.
- Reward the positives like flexibility, innovation and customer experience wins.
- Create legacies by sharing stories and knowledge.
Walk the walk.
Each of these tasks is simple. They require thought to be developed. They need a structure for clarity. And metrics for continuous improvement. Mostly it requires action. If you engage in the activities required to drive engagement, you’ll see the rewards. If you prefer to make announcements rather than take action, you may find yourself falling behind.
Now that you understand your employees and have established buy-in, understand the role leaders play in the process, we’ll walk you through establishing effective and efficient teams as we continue our series on The Brave New World of Employee Engagement.
