Overcoming Confusion, Fear and Complacency to Engage Employees

Recognize This: Intent without action is more than worthless – it could actually contribute to additional disengagement.

Wrapping up our week-long look at the Economist Intelligence Unit/HayGroup study on employee engagement attitudes in the board room, the greatest challenge is the same is in many initiatives – taking action.

“Strong opinions might not translate into visible action. A sizeable discrepancy exists between what companies say about the perils of disengagement and how far they will actually go to confront the problem.”

The lack of action is likely due to three reasons:

1) Confusion – too much advice from too many sources on what to tackle first, making it easier to choose to do nothing.

2) Fear – concern that the “wrong” action might be taken, making engagement worse.

3) Complacency –it’s easier to stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away. After all, it’s not really that bad, right?

Let me make it simple for you. Employee engagement boils down to this: does the employee understand their role in the organization, realize the importance of that role to company success, and desire to contribute their all achieve that success?

Strategic employee recognition is a powerful tool for engaging employees because it communicates clearly, frequently, specifically and in a timely way to all employees, individually: what they are doing that is being done well, what is valued and appreciated by the organization, in a way that encourages the employee to want to repeat it.

And our customers have proven time and again that doing so can increase employee engagement by double digits in just 12 months. It really is that easy. Say “thank you” – specifically, meaningfully and often – and people will be more engaged with you, their team and the company as a whole.

Links to all posts on Economist Intelligence Unit/HayGroup study:
Part 1: C-Suite Blind to Reality of Employee Engagement
Part 2: The Board Must Care about Employee Engagement for Improvement to Be Seen
Part 3: Many Managers Won’t Act on Engagement Unless Empowered by the C-Suite
Part 4: Who’s the Bigger Problem: GenY or Long-Serving Staff?