Manager Tools for Employee Engagement

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Comment by Adam Hibbert on June 12, 2009 at 10:00am

I want to get comms & engagement measurement away from 'opinion metrics' and into 'behaviour metrics', where they might become sufficiently robust to attract the interest of non-Comms/HR people, eg line managers, C-suite, perhaps even Board. That's why I'm currently very interested indeed in the world of information that trampoline's SONAR Diagnostic tool opens up. Is anyone here from one of their clients? Raytheon or McKinsey?

Comment by Hugh Flouch on May 8, 2009 at 6:18pm

Agnes, I have replied to your forum post here.

Comment by Agnes Goh on May 8, 2009 at 1:08pm

I just posted a discussion in the forum on "Are managers and leaders of the organisation the key influencer for increasing employee engagement and how can we improve post survey change efforts. I would really like your comments and opinion on this. Thanks :)

Comment by Gary Irland on April 16, 2009 at 2:26pm

I just posted an article on my blog here on the Engagement site titled "Creating a Continuous Improvement Organization" It is a distillation of experiences with organizations that have succeeded, and some who have failed, in creating a more effective organization. I look forward to comments.

Comment by Derek Irvine on April 3, 2009 at 8:15am

Excellent blog post from Towers Perrin on employee engagement in action. I encourage you to read it -- what leaders can learn about employee engagement from looking at the actions of their own employees.

http://engagementgapblog.com/2009/04/02/employee-engagement-in-action/

Comment by Sandra Benoit on March 26, 2009 at 9:45am

I find it really helpful to be solutions oriented. I don't know if I can explain this fully, because it is really about a paradigm shift.

When you are problem oriented, you focus on problems. You look for things going wrong. You want to identify problems early and fix them. So what?, you ask. The flip side of this is that for your employees you may appear to be too critical, to lack trust in your employees and their ability to do their work. This can lead to disengagement.

When you are solutions oriented you focus on making things better. You don't see problems, but challenges and opportunities. If you then promote a solutions oriented philosophy within your employees, you create a team environment. You don't just look for things going wrong, you look for how to make things better. You look for creative ways to address challenges.

Let me give you an example. In a former job, I had an employee with a young child at home. She wanted to work 3 days a week so she could stay home with her child. Unfortunately, our workload was such that we needed her to work 5 days a week. My boss, a great problem solver, told me to tell her that our problems meant she needed to work 5 days a week or we would help her to find a job elsewhere requiring someone only 3 days a week. - Problem and Solution. My approach was to look at our need and her need to find a reasonable solution. She worked three days a week in the office. Since her child sleeps every afternoon for 3-4 hours, I had her telework during those hours (giving me 1 more day of work). But there was still one day left. My exempting her from certain meetings (and giving her a synopsis of the meeting, rather than having her participate) and having her call into other meetings, we were able to reduce our need for her to four days a week.

This created a very engaged team. My employee was engaged because we were meeting her needs and ours and the other employees were engaged because they knew that if they were facing challenges, we would find solutions together.

It also helps employees to realize the power of team (Together Everyone Accomplishes More!)

Comment by Robert Morris on March 18, 2009 at 10:12am

I have learned a great deal from the comments posted by so many EEN members. Thank you all very much. It may be of interest and value to know about a book I have just reviewed for Amazon, Torkel Klingberg’s The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory, published by Oxford University Press.

Here is the last paragraph of my review, followed by a brief comment:

“In his review for the Wall Street Journal (Monday, December 15, 2008), Christopher Chambris suggests another reason why I think so highly of this book. "For Mr. Klingberg, the mismatch between our modern lives and ancient brains is most evident in the problems of working memory and attention, but another culprit may be at work. We are easily distracted also because we vastly overvalue what happens to us [begin italics] right now [end italics] compared with what comes in the future and because novelty is intrinsically rewarding. So whatever we are supposed to be focusing on has to compete with every new email, new task, new blog post and new conversation that wanders into our information sphere." Chamblis' purpose is not to suggest how to cope with various workplace "culprits." It remains to be determined by additional research in a new field of neuroscience whether or not the capacities of the "ancient brain" can be increased to accommodate the "flow" of information in the 21st century. However, in my opinion, Torkel Klingberg has made a substantial and significant contribution to our understanding of what workplace supervisors can and should do to balance their working load with working memory capacity within their own "information sphere" and also help others for whom they are responsible to do so within theirs'. The extent to which workplace distractions are reduced will almost certainly determine the extent to workplace productivity will increase. Moreover, there will be another benefit of incalculable value: improved worker morale.”

Here’s the brief comment in the form of four key points:

1. Know what is most important at work and in your personal life
2. Balance what is most important in both areas and eliminate distractions
3. Keep in mind that is what is most important this week may be less important next week…and vice versa
4. Help others to achieve the goals identified by points 1-3 (e.g. by doing all you can to avoid distracting them and to prevent others from doing so)

Comment by Jay Forte on March 17, 2009 at 8:11am

Hi team,
I wanted to let you know that my book is finally out and it deals specifically with helping managers understand how to be great at activating employee performance. The book is titled, Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition; How to Invite, Incite and Ignite Employee Performance. You can find it now at the site www.FireUpYourEmployees.com and soon in the normal channels. I have put a number of the chapters on the website for free downloads - and have put my new talent assessment tool on the site as well. Check it out and let me know what you think. The goal of the book is to create a clear Fire Up process to help managers know, step-by-step, how to engage and inspire employees to achieve, perform and connect. Let me know what you think.

Comment by Gary Irland on March 9, 2009 at 12:49pm

Each year at Toyota the 67,000 employees submit approximately 700,000 improvement ideas. Over 99% of these ideas are implemented.
This is authentic engagement, a result of providing clear expectations of managers, supervisors and employees. One of the expectations is "If you work here, you are expected to care about the organization, and demonstrate that caring" This system and accompanying expectations was created by effective management. No quick fixes, no tricks or techniques, no smoke and mirrors.
Thanks, Gary

Comment by John Kmiec on January 2, 2009 at 12:06am

To me, besides the employees themselves, immediate managers (first line supervisors) have the greatest impact on employee engagement. Helping immediate managers create an engaging environment is a major factor in an organization's overall success. Glad to join this group!

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