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Employee Engagement: Listen to Engage

Engagement – we’ve been talking about it for years. It might be time to ask yourself a few questions. 1. How’s your engagement strategy going?

Engagement. When you have it, you reap the rewards. When you haven’t, everyone suffers. In a world where Millennials and Baby Boomers are working side by side, it feels impossible to cater for everyone.

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How do you design a workplace that engages and inspires the fresh and the new, along with the experienced and the cynical?

Ask yourself a few questions:

  • How’s your engagement strategy going these days?
  • Have you had much success with your employee engagement programmes?
  • You’ve talked the talk about putting the employee at the centre of your organisation, but have you walked the walk?

If the answers worry you, then maybe the problem is that you have been planning and talking but not doing. Maybe you’ve not focused on the right areas.

Think about your workforce. What’s the top issue that comes up again and again on your surveys? What have you done to transform the working environment to make sure it is addressed? Perhaps you’re getting low scores around people feeling connected to the organisation, or feeling valued by leaders.

Ask some more questions:

  • Have you reviewed your brand and made sure that every employee understands how their job adds to its success?
  • Have you embraced a culture of coaching and feedback that helps employees feel in control of their career goals?

If the answer to these questions is a weary ‘no’, then you have a good point to start.

The trick is helping your people feel inspired by change – rather than seeing change as an unnecessary imposition. This is all about listening.

Your best sources of information are the people on the ground. Your managers and supervisors know exactly what the working environment is like. They know what is holding people back and what could help them feel more positive about their organisation.

Listening, and showing that you’ve listened, will appeal to those who feel the company is shifting beneath them but don’t know how to move with it.

It’s a very simple but powerful equation:

Employees feel connected to their managers when they feel listened to. They are then more likely to connect with your customers, which increases the value of your brand and therefore the value of your organisation.

If you’re asking yourself some questions, but don’t know what to do with your answers, come speak with us. We’d love to hear about your organisation, and how you could drive real change.

Learn more about engaging the millennial workforce by reading our millennial wave white paper. And, of course let us know what you think.