June 1, 2017
Gallup recently released the 2017 findings from their seminal work on employee engagement in the American workplace. Once again, the percentage of employees who report being “engaged” is 33 percent. This number is disappointing and has barely changed over the past decade. Must we simply resign ourselves to the fact that a vast majority of employees will show up to work every day being disengaged? No! There is another way!
We believe that engagement in the workplace can be improved, and that there is a level of performance beyond engagement; that employees yearn for a work environment that creates the conditions that encourage them to show up at their best. Fulfillment at work doesn’t need to be so rare, and it’s not rocket science either.
Think of a time in your life when you were at your best, when your heart was fully in it, and your performance reflected your passion. List the conditions that created or accompanied that performance. Now start creating those conditions at work. They will give others a greater opportunity to become more fully engaged and even reach that level of performance that goes beyond engagement.
When we create a workplace that fosters inspiration, encourages the inspired, and recognizes employees who are all in, we’ll see these changes reflected in the numbers. When we’re inspired, we become inspiring, and that’s a lot better than engaged.
How do we accomplish this on a very limited, fixed-cost budget, as fast as possible, since time is rarely ever our friend! When we create the conditions that allow our team members to become “everyday inspired,” we are truly creating employee and team performance opportunities that bring the absolute best outcomes for our companies. Each and every company has a plethora of internal resources they apply in the name of employee development, which are sometimes seen as “must participate or else” job prerequisites from above. I am going to suggest another way, one that engenders much more trust, communication, and responsibility by you toward your team.
I want to suggest that some significant portion of your training dollars should be put into the hands of others who are like-minded but come from different places. AICC is an outstanding example of everything that is right about this. The AICC training programs can be done online, off-site, or a combination of the two. Trusting your employee(s) to go off-site occasionally is almost always rewarding to their attitudes, to their confidence in their companies, and certainly to their spirits upon returning.
The AICC training is short in time frame, selective, and very specific to a particular salient topic.
NOTE: This is exactly the way we should deliver employee feedback, hopefully multiple times per year, and much more positively than negatively, if we know what’s truly good for us anyway!
When our key employees are trusted to attend training events off-site, they become, in essence, important ambassadors for their company, set an example for others, and certainly listen carefully to make certain the training message and intent are articulated back to their senior leadership. The folks who are chosen to attend these sponsored events always come back with more “arrows in their quiver” and become even more “everyday inspired” team members for their respective peers and subordinates. My opinion is to not necessarily spend more, but just to look at the option of utilizing such a treasure as AICC to aid your efforts to continually stay engaged with your key high-potential employees, and they will reward you daily for your trust!
A wise man, Steven Vannoy, who developed Pathways to Leadership training, once told me, “Tom, do you want to improve your top 10 key employees by 10 percent, the ones who give you 80 percent of what you like daily already? Or do you want to improve your bottom 10 employees by 10 percent, who only give you 50 percent of what you like daily, at best?”
Well, that’s easy. The top 10 improvement totals 80 percent and thus gives me literally another entire employee, and frankly it is done much more easily and swiftly, by willing employees! The bottom improvement gives me a mere 50 percent at best and is agonizingly tough, with way too many distractions. I guess you get the picture!
My take is this: Use the resources you have both internally and certainly externally to get that top tier of your employees “everyday inspired” to make your respective company the best it can possibly be. It is all about your focus as a key business leader in our fine industry.
Good luck, and let’s make it a great 2017.
Tom Weber is folding carton adviser for AICC. He can be reached at tweber@aiccbox.org.
