The Power of Employee Engagement - Part 1

By now, many of us have heard the buzz on employee engagement – so much so that the buzzword is loosing its value. Talent management and employee engagement, just like other buzzwords and business fads, really do have value – if we understand their true meaning and don’t let them get diluted with misconceptions. Engagement goes beyond the good employee or the good company citizen. Employee engagement is the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, in the form of extra time, energy and brainpower. Think about it… When companies are often trying to improve performance with fewer people and decreasing resources due to cutbacks and financial pressures, discretionary effort is the grail managers are seeking. Employees who freely give that extra effort are of tremendous value. Read the full article here

How Do You Lead?

"We lead by being human. We do not lead by being corporate, by being professional, or by being institutional." --Paul Hawken If you are leading a department or a project team, ask yourself: How do I lead my team?

• Do I depend primarily on my position or power to get things done?
• Do I depend on company policy? Procedures? And Regulations?
• Do I lead by being human? By having a vision and inspiring people to join in the excitement of achieving it?

Employee Involvement

"When people become involved in the problem, they become significantly and sincerely committed to coming up with solutions to the problem." --Stephen Covey Involving employees is the secret to employee ownership of their work. This simple fact is too often forgotten or totally missed by some managers. Instead of blaming employees for the existence of a problem, ask them to come up with solutions to prevent its recurrence. If the problem is complex, ask a team of employees to get together to study the problem and come up with proposed solutions. Ask the team to make a presentation to the entire department about the problem and their solution. This kind of employee involvement achieves several benefits:

• Employees feel empowered and motivated. This can have a great impact on morale.
• The high morale generated from such activity will reduce turnover and increase retention.
• The team solution will ensure that employees will have a stake in its success, and will feel committed to results.
• The delegation of responsibility creates a much improved relationship with the manager.
• The department will end up with a better solution than the one that’s likely to be generated by the manager alone.
• The manager will have more time to pursue other projects, boosting his or her own productivity and effectiveness.

How to Take Risks at Work

Effective leaders are those who know which risks to take at work, and how to take these risks. But risk-taking is often misunderstood. While management consultants and business books advocate it, they seldom provide guidelines on how to do it right.

Taking risks does not mean gambling with the key interests of the organization or the department. It does not mean making decisions based on unfounded hunches without regard to consequences. It does not mean taking huge ‘leaps of faith’ into new areas with no information or justification what so ever.

What does risk-taking mean then? And how do you do it effectively at work? Francois Basili, president of Communication Ideas, provides the following guidelines gleaned from his years of experience helping leaders develop risk-taking and innovative leadership skills:

1. Taking a risk at work is not something you can always avoid. What is important is to ensure that the risk you will be taking is a “calculated” one.
2. Get your team involved in the information gathering and decision making processes. Do not rely just on yourself. A team is always more effective than each of its members acting alone.
3. Gather the key information about the situation from various sources.
4. Consider the pros and cons of available options and the risk elements involved, and assess both the likelihood and the impact of each element.
5. Involve the stake-holders in assessing the impact of the risk and get their agreement on the course of action if possible.
6. Keep monitoring progress and make changes or corrections if necessary.

Almost any decision that causes change will involve a certain degree of risk. This fact should not stop us from making the tough decisions and taking the calculated risks associate with them.