3 Steps to Engage Employees for Increased Productivity

Recognize This! – Employees need clarity, direction, consistent communication and recognition to engage and deliver desired results.

Recent AON Hewitt research on the status of employee engagement globally tells us:

* Worldwide, employee engagement is at 56%, which indicates a workforce indifferent to organizational success or failure.
* The largest engagement drop is in how employees perceive performance management.
* Globally, employees don’t think managers have connected individual performance to organizational goals.

Is anyone surprised by these findings? It’s the same results reported again and again by various sources. Research from RogenSi (reported in MSNBC) found:

Quotation

“Workers, it appears, are still relatively uninspired by their workplaces: while they are knuckling down and getting on with the job, the payback for them, judging by their responses, has been a lack of clarity and communication in where their organisations are heading and a profound sense of feeling undervalued by their leaders, leading to a lack of respect for those above them. These are sour ingredients for a fruitful workplace.”

Once again, employees are pointing their leadership to what they need in order to engage and increase productivity on things management actually cares about:

1. Recognition for their efforts
2. Better communication about company direction
3. Clarity on how individual employees can contribute

The AON Hewitt research cited above provides excellent advice on how to deliver precisely that (quoting):

Following are universally applicable best practices for improving and maintaining engagement:

* Create a strategy for improving employee engagement based on data with specific goals
* Communicate a clear “employment deal” that links the success of the company to employees
* Display authentic leadership; be consistently open, honest and transparent
* Invest in improving the capabilities of middle managers

What should your managers do to inspire you?