Don't be a sheep when it comes to employee engagement

Time after time, clients tell me they listen to advice and guidance out there on social media and in HR or industry publications on how to engage their employees but when they try to put it into practice, they don’t get the expected results.

Why is this? – Because you are following generic advice that doesn’t take account of your ECO (Your Employees, Your Culture, Your Organisation).
If you are taking the quick easy route by following the majority rather than first understanding what the best outcome is for you then you are being a Sheeple (A person who is acting like a sheep).

For advice and guidance to be most effective for your ECO, you first need to decide specifically what it is you are trying to achieve. If your goal is as high level as trying to engage your employees, then this could be very open to interpretation. The term employee engagement has been around as a management concept for over 30 years and initially related to staff morale and job satisfaction. Today there is a wealth of information out there related to employee engagement – some credible and some not so but the meaning of employee engagement remains contested.

Before you start following the advice you read or listening to the top tips for employee engagement discussed in a podcast, it can be helpful to decide what the definition of employee engagement is for your ECO.

Once you have a definition that aligns with the beliefs and values of your ECO, it is easier to think about what you are trying to achieve by having a more engaged workforce. Ask yourself what do your employees want when they say they want to be engaged. What outcomes is your employer looking for when they say they want engaged employees?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can then start to look at the advice and guidance you come across and see which aspects are relevant to your ECO.  By carving out your own solutions to employee engagement rather than blindly following the herd and doing what everyone else does, you will find that the actions you put in place give your ECO the successful outcomes it is after.

For more information on how you can carve out your own solutions to employee engagement get in touch. I’ll be delighted to discuss your requirements and how I could help