10 Simple Steps to Inspire and Engage Your Employees to Do Their Best for You

A disengaged employee is like an unplugged alarm clock. Neither works very well.

Employee engagement is not a game. It isn’t a one-time fix, nor a once-per-year cash bonus bribe. Employee engagement is like social media engagement; it has to be authentic, sustained, and personal. Leaders, executives, and front-line supervisors must engage employees to keep them happy, motivated, and productive lest they leave.

In the field of mechanics, “engagement” is defined as the state of interlocking. People interlock or commit for a variety of reasons. But lasting relationships are based on very personal and emotional needs being met. This includes the relationship a company has with its employees and the other way around.

To fully engage an employee, a leader and his or her company must connect to employees’ hopes, needs, and dreams; however, the way to do this is not as obvious as you might think. At my company, we had a turnover rate that was half that of our industry, and the highest rate of “boomerang” employees (people who left but later came back). We achieved this by fully engaging employees.

These 10 ways will help you engage your company’s greatest asset:

Nobody likes walking into the dark. But people will gladly follow a leader who has a clear, understandable, and thoughtful map of where everyone should be heading.

The center to human happiness is knowing you provide value. Bloated payrolls with too little for everyone to do creates the opposite sense of self-worth. Better to ask too much of people than too little. People tend to surprise you in their ability to deliver.

Nobody follows a leader riddled with doubt, insecurity, or apathy. A CEO’s job is to be a full-time cheerleader. Understanding goals and believing they can be achieved will make employees thrilled to do so. One reason people feel at home with their families is that families care for their own, which is a very human goal that everyone shares. Corporate families should be no different. The sense of security from knowing every other employee has your back makes you equally committed to them.

Cultures are shared belief systems and social rules. Since corporate anarchy is not profitable, creating a culture that sets the rules of behavior–internal and external–is an essential form of engagement. A good culture is self-reinforcing, and adds to continual employee engagement.

Everyone likes appreciation (which is different from flattery). People do good work every day, but in some companies these deeds are never recognized. By having everyone look for and acknowledge the good work of everyone else, you create a positive reinforcement and engagement mechanism.

Everyone needs money. When everything else is equal, people go to the highest paying job. By engaging employees through leadership, vision, and culture, you make money less of a variable. And when you’re also competitive with your pay and benefits, you create a place nobody wants to leave.

Nobody likes being treated unfairly. If you let any instance of unfairness pass, it can fester and infect an entire team, division, or company. An employee who never doubts they will be treated unfairly believes they are being engaged honestly.

People are not mushrooms; they dislike being kept in the dark and fed manure. Frequent, relevant, and information-filled meetings will make employees feel engaged and part of the operational flow.

The more layers any organization has, the more insulated employees feel. Flatter organizations, aside from being more efficient, create a more personal feel and a belief that even the top executives have the ear of every employee.

Not all managers are created equal–though you have great influence over their behavior. Managers who treat their employees well tend to keep them, and they do so using many of the engagement reasons listed above. Make sure the ones who treat their teams well are recognized, and coach the others to do the same. On the flip side, high turnover in a department is a sure sign that the managers are doing something wrong. You may be able to coach them past minor management issues, but when a manager consistently alienates employees to the point where they start leaving your company, that manager is the one who needs to go.

Post by: Ray Zinn

Raymond D. “Ray” Zinn is an inventor, entrepreneur, and the longest-serving CEO of a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley. Ray is best known for conceptualizing and in effect inventing the Wafer Stepper, and for co-founding semiconductor company Micrel (acquired by Microchip in 2015), which provides essential components for smartphones, consumer electronics, and enterprise networks. He served as Micrel’s Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and President since the company’s inception in 1978 through to its acquisition in 2015. He authored Tough Things First in 2015, and now finances and advises startup entrepreneurs.

Company: Tough Things First
Website: www.toughthingsfirst.com
Connect with me on Facebook , Twitter , and LinkedIn.

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