Dear All, How can leaders engage employees' heads, hearts, and hands? The literature offers several avenues for action; we summarize these as the Ten C's of employee engagement.
1. Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that managers trump companies. Employee-focused initiatives such as profit sharing and implementing work–life balance initiatives are important. However, if employees’ relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks will persuade employees to perform at top levels. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss. Employees look at whether organizations and their leader walk the talk when they proclaim that, “Our employees are our most valuable asset.”
2. Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do organizations provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals? Do leaders hold people accountable for progress? Are jobs enriched in duties and responsibilities? Good leaders challenge employees; but at the same time, they must instill the confidence that the challenges can be met. Not giving people the knowledge and tools to be successful is unethical and de-motivating; it is also likely to lead to stress, frustration, and, ultimately, lack of engagement. In her book Confidence
3. Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. People want to understand the vision that senior leadership has for the organization, and the goals that leaders or departmental heads have for the division, unit, or team. Success in life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want to achieve. In sum, employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they are important, and how the goals can best be attained. Clarity about what the organization stands for, what it wants to achieve, and how people can contribute to the organization’s success is not always evident. Consider.
4. Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their functioning in the organization. Good leaders establish processes and procedures that help people master important tasks and facilitate goal achievement. Good leaders work daily to improve the skills of their people and create small wins that help the team, unit, or organization perform at its best.
5. Congratulate: Business leaders can learn a great deal from Wooden’s approach. Surveys show that, over and over, employees feel that they receive immediate feedback when their performance is poor, or below expectations. These same employees also report that praise and recognition for strong performance is much less common. Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.
6. Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to the organization’s success in a meaningful way.. First, an employee’s understanding of the connection between their work – as operationalized by specific job-relevant behaviors – and the strategic objectives of the company had a positive impact on job performance. Second, an employee’s attitude towards the job and the company had the greatest impact on loyalty and customer service than all the other employee factors combined. Third, improvements in employee attitude led to improvements in job-relevant behavior; this, in turn, increased customer satisfaction and an improvement in revenue growth. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel how they are contributing to the organization’s success and future.
7. Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create opportunities for employees to exercise this control. Do leaders consult with their employees with regard to their needs? Are leaders flexible and attuned to the needs of the employees as well as the organization? Do leaders involve employees in decision-making, particularly when employees will be directly affected by the decision? Do employees have a say in setting goals or milestones that are deemed important? Are employees able to voice their ideas, and does leadership show that contributions are valued?
A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being given opportunities to participate in decision making often reduces stress; it also creates trust and a culture where people want to take ownership of problems and their solutions. There are numerous examples of organizations whose implementation of an open-book management style and creating room for employees to contribute to making decisions had a positive effect on engagement and organizational performance.
8. Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration. Surveys indicate that being cared about by colleagues is a strong predictor of employee engagement. Thus, a continuous challenge for leaders is to rally individuals to collaborate on organizational, departmental, and group goals, while excluding individuals pursuing their self-interest.
9. Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain acompany’s reputation and demonstrate high ethical standards. People want to be proud of their jobs, their performance, and their organization.
10. Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high ethical and performance standards. New leadership was faced with the major challenges of regaining public trust and fostering employee engagement.
Practitioners and academics have argued that competitive advantage can be gained by creating an engaged workforce. The data and argument that that we present above are a compelling case why leaders need to make employee engagement one of their priorities. Leaders should actively try to identify the level of engagement in their organization, find the reasons behind the lack of full engagement, strive to eliminate those reasons, and implement behavioral strategies that will facilitate full engagement. These efforts should be ongoing. Employee engagement is hard to achieve and if not sustained by leaders it can wither with relative ease.
From India, Tiruchchirappalli
571. Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that managers trump companies. Employee-focused initiatives such as profit sharing and implementing work–life balance initiatives are important. However, if employees’ relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks will persuade employees to perform at top levels. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss. Employees look at whether organizations and their leader walk the talk when they proclaim that, “Our employees are our most valuable asset.”
2. Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do organizations provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals? Do leaders hold people accountable for progress? Are jobs enriched in duties and responsibilities? Good leaders challenge employees; but at the same time, they must instill the confidence that the challenges can be met. Not giving people the knowledge and tools to be successful is unethical and de-motivating; it is also likely to lead to stress, frustration, and, ultimately, lack of engagement. In her book Confidence
3. Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. People want to understand the vision that senior leadership has for the organization, and the goals that leaders or departmental heads have for the division, unit, or team. Success in life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want to achieve. In sum, employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they are important, and how the goals can best be attained. Clarity about what the organization stands for, what it wants to achieve, and how people can contribute to the organization’s success is not always evident. Consider.
4. Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their functioning in the organization. Good leaders establish processes and procedures that help people master important tasks and facilitate goal achievement. Good leaders work daily to improve the skills of their people and create small wins that help the team, unit, or organization perform at its best.
5. Congratulate: Business leaders can learn a great deal from Wooden’s approach. Surveys show that, over and over, employees feel that they receive immediate feedback when their performance is poor, or below expectations. These same employees also report that praise and recognition for strong performance is much less common. Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.
6. Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to the organization’s success in a meaningful way.. First, an employee’s understanding of the connection between their work – as operationalized by specific job-relevant behaviors – and the strategic objectives of the company had a positive impact on job performance. Second, an employee’s attitude towards the job and the company had the greatest impact on loyalty and customer service than all the other employee factors combined. Third, improvements in employee attitude led to improvements in job-relevant behavior; this, in turn, increased customer satisfaction and an improvement in revenue growth. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel how they are contributing to the organization’s success and future.
7. Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create opportunities for employees to exercise this control. Do leaders consult with their employees with regard to their needs? Are leaders flexible and attuned to the needs of the employees as well as the organization? Do leaders involve employees in decision-making, particularly when employees will be directly affected by the decision? Do employees have a say in setting goals or milestones that are deemed important? Are employees able to voice their ideas, and does leadership show that contributions are valued?
A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being given opportunities to participate in decision making often reduces stress; it also creates trust and a culture where people want to take ownership of problems and their solutions. There are numerous examples of organizations whose implementation of an open-book management style and creating room for employees to contribute to making decisions had a positive effect on engagement and organizational performance.
8. Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration. Surveys indicate that being cared about by colleagues is a strong predictor of employee engagement. Thus, a continuous challenge for leaders is to rally individuals to collaborate on organizational, departmental, and group goals, while excluding individuals pursuing their self-interest.
9. Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain acompany’s reputation and demonstrate high ethical standards. People want to be proud of their jobs, their performance, and their organization.
10. Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high ethical and performance standards. New leadership was faced with the major challenges of regaining public trust and fostering employee engagement.
Practitioners and academics have argued that competitive advantage can be gained by creating an engaged workforce. The data and argument that that we present above are a compelling case why leaders need to make employee engagement one of their priorities. Leaders should actively try to identify the level of engagement in their organization, find the reasons behind the lack of full engagement, strive to eliminate those reasons, and implement behavioral strategies that will facilitate full engagement. These efforts should be ongoing. Employee engagement is hard to achieve and if not sustained by leaders it can wither with relative ease.
From India, Tiruchchirappalli
Dear Citizen1502,
You have copied the article from some website and uploaded it here. As of now I would not like to check whether the rules of this forum permit such copy and paste work. Nevertheless, I am of the strong opinion that the professionalism does not lie in dissemination of web content.
My question is did you implement these 10 C's of the Employee Engagement in your work? What was your experience? What challenges did you face in implementation? How could you measure the increase in employee engagement? Example of your success or failure is far more valuable to the members of this forum. Value addition happens when we share our own experience of the implementation of some theory.
Let us draw buckets of knowledge from the reservoir called citehr and grow garden in our backyard rather than waste efforts in adding the few more buckets in the reservoir which anyway has filled to its brim!
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
You have copied the article from some website and uploaded it here. As of now I would not like to check whether the rules of this forum permit such copy and paste work. Nevertheless, I am of the strong opinion that the professionalism does not lie in dissemination of web content.
My question is did you implement these 10 C's of the Employee Engagement in your work? What was your experience? What challenges did you face in implementation? How could you measure the increase in employee engagement? Example of your success or failure is far more valuable to the members of this forum. Value addition happens when we share our own experience of the implementation of some theory.
Let us draw buckets of knowledge from the reservoir called citehr and grow garden in our backyard rather than waste efforts in adding the few more buckets in the reservoir which anyway has filled to its brim!
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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