An engaged workforce is a happy workforce. In its latest The State of the American Workplace poll, Gallup focused on 12 actionable workplace elements that can be proven to coincide with performance. Employee engagement was highest among companies that had the four following traits:
1. Strategy and leadership philosophy: Although most organizations now recognize the central role employee engagement plays in driving profit and growth, leaders still fail to provide a clear vision to their people of how engagement connects to the company’s mission and growth strategy…. The best leaders understand that there is an emotional undercurrent to everything they do, which affects how they conduct business every day.
TIP: Take a strategic, top-down approach to engaging leadership teams and then cascade engagement through the ranks of managers to employees on the front lines.
2. Accountability and performance: Highly engaged organizations hold managers accountable—not just for their team’s engagement, but also for how it relates to their team’s overall performance.
TIP: Embed engagement into managers’ balanced scorecards and use it as performance-evaluation criteria.
3. Communication and knowledge management: Leaders in the best organizations take a strategic approach to aligning their employee-engagement communication efforts. They find ways to communicate engagement’s impact throughout the year and share engagement tools and best practices within the organization.
TIP: Use every opportunity, touch point, and available communication channel to reinforce and recognize the organization’s commitment to employee engagement. Try to fully integrate employee engagement into the organization’s lexicon.
4. Development and ongoing learning opportunities: The world’s top-performing organizations start engaging employees from the minute they show up on the first day. These organizations have well-defined and comprehensive leader and manager development programs, but they also go one step further—they fully integrate employee engagement into these programs.
TIP: Take a look at your leadership and personal development programs and see where you can seamlessly coordinate employee engagement into your ongoing efforts.
Happiness and good health go hand in hand. Find out four low- and no-cost ways to make your company healthier and, therefore, happier.
