How You Can Fix the Flaws in Your Employee Engagement Program

Employee engagement is essential for any successful business, but companies can be so focused on engaging their employees that they miss the point. Employees don’t need free food and fun activities to be engaged in their jobs, so it’s important for employers to recognize what’s essential and what’s just masking true engagement problems. Read ahead to learn how engagement programs can fail and how you can fix these flaws.10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company. Forbes: “Concentrate instead on helping your employees be effective and more successful. Let their happiness, eagerness, and energy follow of its own accord. There are three areas for you to focus on: Ensure clarity of purpose — Employees must know what they are trying to accomplish, why, how well, and with what priorities and constraints. Ensure clarity of roles — Talent and responsibilities must be well-matched so employees feel challenged but with a fair shot at excellence. Ensure clarity of process — Employees must understand how the game is played, know where things stand, know how they can best contribute, believe decision-makers are informed and fair, and believe they can influence the process if things are going awry.”The Easiest Thing You Can Do to Be a Great Boss. Harvard Business Review: “There’s one simple action that can dramatically increase any manager’s success in gaining the support and engagement of subordinates: recognize great work. That means calling out excellent accomplishments by your employees right away — and doing so in consistent and regular increments from the start. We know from our own research that a handwritten note trumps an e-mail. Public recognition in a meeting or peer group makes people feel even more appreciated. And an award presented in a public setting is most effective in conveying a sense of a good job properly acknowledged.”How You Lost Your Engaged Employees… and How to Win Them Back. Business 2 Community: “Ensure that deserving employees are individually recognized for all their hard work. This recognition does not need to involve money or gifts — usually an email announcement or a post on a company-wide social tool that gets ‘liked’ and shared is more valuable than any gift card or trinket. In order for recognition to become part of the company culture, upper management must drive the initiative and it must be communicated consistently.”To Improve Engagement, More Leaders Will Need To Truly Embrace Engagement. ERE Media: “Leaders today are in the driver’s seat whether it is about financial results, or more importantly, creating an innovative culture. There are many businesses that want to be innovative but are not because they lack the culture, environment, and people that provide a foundation for innovation to occur. However, if you look at any top organization you will find common threads, and for the most part, most are not run by innovative leaders who are highly engaged.”HR’s Greatest Challenge: Driving the C-Suite to Improve Engagement, Retention. SHRM: “Establish engagement and retention goals at each leader level. Scores of studies reach the same conclusion: Employees stay or leave and engage or disengage based on how much they trust their supervisors. More studies say the single best way to improve these metrics is to hold first-line supervisors accountable for their direct reports. Yet most companies continue to say, ‘HR, go fix it,’ and employees visit career fairs while grumbling about their current bosses. When was the last time you heard a good worker say, ‘My boss treats me like dirt … but I’m holding on for employee appreciation week?’”Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.