{"id":778,"date":"2007-09-13T01:00:40","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T09:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=778"},"modified":"2007-09-13T01:00:43","modified_gmt":"2007-09-13T09:00:43","slug":"understanding-the-contributors-to-employee-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Contributors to Employee Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"

The May 2007 issue of HBR gives us a broader view of employee engagement and defines some of the contributors for it.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, employee engagement is not made up of one huge event that makes the employee committed to work, company and co-workers.\u00a0 Instead, each workday event has marginal immediate and downstream effects on engagement.\u00a0 The aggregated and cumulative workday events effect downstream long term engagement.\u00a0\u00a0 ((Amabile, Teresa and Kramer, Steven, May 2007.\u00a0 \u201cInner Work Life.\u201d\u00a0 HBR May 2007, Pgs 72-83))<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty common sensical that an ongoing stream of poor work experiences will eventually erode any goodwill and engagement an employee has for the job or company.\u00a0 And we all know that this eventually turns into turnover, lower productivity and higher costs, eventually impacting the profitability of the organization.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ve talked about engagement before as the ability of an organization to provide \u201ccool work<\/a>\u201d and this simply isn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 The brand may be at the core of our philosophy around employee engagement, but it\u2019s really the daily actions that solidify the brand.<\/p>\n

In effect, people can be engaged in the long term, but still have bad days.\u00a0 When people are having good days, they are found to be more productive.\u00a0\u00a0 So the question is to understand how you can create a continuous stream of good days?\u00a0 Amabile and Kramer give us two good ideas of how to increase those good days.\u00a0 First, enable progress, and second, manage with a human touch.\u00a0\u00a0 ((Ibid))<\/p>\n

The first idea, enabling progress, really comes to the core of what I\u2019ve always thought of as a key indicator of engagement.\u00a0 We must love our work.\u00a0 However, a corollary idea to that is that if we love our work, we must also feel like we\u2019re making progress in it.\u00a0 Good days consist of progress.\u00a0 From the management perspective of having a steady stream of good days, this means providing clearly articulated goals and objectives.\u00a0 Nothing kills a producer more than finding out after the fact that he\/she has been spinning wheels on something that actually wasn\u2019t important.\u00a0 Second, this means that once the manager has articulated a direction, priorities and deadlines, allow your talent to stick to the course.\u00a0 If your continuously re-prioritize or interrupt work for other tasks, you are continuously devaluing the work they are performing.\u00a0 The bottom line is that if management expects your talent to love their work, management needs to demonstrate it\u2019s importance.<\/p>\n

Second is managing with a human touch.\u00a0 This is obvious, but we all continuously see how bad managers manage tasks, or manage with some degree of cruelty.\u00a0 In the end, some portion of engagement also consists of community, and management style should reflect that.\u00a0 At the end of the day, we need to realize that every action our managers and leaders take influences employee engagement.\u00a0 This simply becomes part of culture and brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The May 2007 issue of HBR gives us a broader view of employee engagement and defines some of the contributors for it.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, employee engagement is not made up of one huge event that makes the employee committed to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,10,20,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communications","category-engagement","category-talent-management","category-workforce-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}