Great Engagement Exercises

[Samantha Wood]

We seem to be in the mood at the moment for sharing examples of stuff we've come across, experiences we've had etc... with that in mind (and thinking about how hard it can be to take what we do out of theory and put it into practice), I want to ask what fantastic employee engagement exercises have you been a part of or implemented yourself?

One of the best I ever experienced was a writing workshop. Not an engagement exercise on the face of it, and yet it was so good and so useful to me in my job that it made me feel hugely supported and invested in. The workshop was brilliantly thought through - and part of the deal was that the presenters would stay on some kind of retainer to help employees with any writing problems that might come up in the future. This made it feel like a meaningful exercise rather than just a nice thing that happened one day. (It was provided by Sunfish).

How about you?

[John Nicholls]

One of the best engagement exercises I use when working with groups is to divide people into small groups of 3 or 4 and ask them to produce flipchart size posters of the successes they have had at work in the last six months. I'll allow one "hitting target" type success but the rest have to be the warm glowing successes from interacting with colleagues, customers etc. Once we've made our posters, we talk about them to the rest of the group and pull out things in common and how they feed into the organisation's ethos and vision. We also discuss ways of making these successes more common place or vow to notice them more.

[C Panisales]

Here is an idea that our engagement committee implemented this year. The idea is that at our weekly full-team meeting (30+ people), individual members can stand-up and recognize someone on the team or share something they learned and therefore recognize themselves. Every person that is recognized is given a "Recognition Idol" for the week. The objective of the idea was to address recognition, and sharing of information since we have many new hires on the floor, It has been wonderfully successful and has promoted teamwork and open sharing of information. Each week our team meetings end on a positive note with all the sharing and positive recognition of each other. Recognition doesn't always need to be top-down!

[Tim Houlihan]

I couldn't help but sharing this with this group when I saw it this morning (9 Oct 2009) and hope this is appropriate for all of you.

Some of my company's clients tell me that external motivation doesn't really work. Rewards don't matter to their employees because they work as hard as they can all the time. They claim that top performers are simply hardwired that way and that those in the middle, well, they're doing what they can at the level they see fit. I suppose the same could be said about people using the stairs versus the escalators.

In this simple test, the reward (the sound of the piano keys walking up the steps) was enough to get 66% more people using the stairs than normal. Rewards work. Extrinsic motivation works. Rewards that have emotional connections work the best. As you can see, there was not a single monetary offering in this situation.

Irrational? Yes. Luxurious? Absolutely (who would buy this for themselves?). Special thanks to to the people at Volkswagen for making this video and the people in Sweden who took part in this "study."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy!

Tim

[Kevin Mazur]

This is one that I Used in the Military.
Train the Trainer.
Working in both the military and civilian Sectors of the Telecom Business, Telecom is always changing and We as technicians are always trying to stay up on the what company's are providing and needing to stay productive in this global world. The thing that company's are forgetting is that we as technicians want to be important in what we provide to the company we work for and someday would like to be a leader as well. So one way to know who would be good leaders and Trainers is for the Trainer or the Leaders to let the technician train the leaders in what makes A get to B. This also will help out when decisions are being made so you can go to an employee out in the field to help out in what would work and what wouldn't work. This is one way that workers feel important and that they count.
As far as the military. Train the Trainer was used to make younger soldiers leaders and give them a chance to see what it is like to be on the other side. Then once the classes are done then the leaders evaluate the trainer and give advise on what was done right and what needs improvement.
Now this has helped me and it shows who stands out as leaders and who is just there to work. I am a big believer in promoting from within. This saves money and saves on training time.