Improve Employee Engagement

February 18, 2019 By // by Andrew Shaffer

This month, I’ve been writing about different aspects of proactive leadership. Proactive leadership is all about keeping your head up while taking care of the day to day aspects of your job. Proactive leadership is anything from keeping ahead of industry trends, to actively looking to identify and develop the talent in your organization. By being a proactive leader, you create a highly engaged workforce. There is a plethora of surveys to help you measure your team’s engagement. There are also tons of stats showing how engaged employees help your business. Today I am going to write about three ways you can help improve employee engagement in your organization.

Improve Employee Engagement

What is employee engagement? When I ask many leaders, they think that engagement is somewhere between how “happy” employees or some sort of satisfaction survey. I’ll tell you first hand, that happy employees are not always engaged employees, but engaged employees are happy employees.

In my book Maximizing The Human Potential I describe employee engagement as an emotional attachment to your job. When someone is engaged, they are more productive and less distracted. Here are some things to focus on to improve employee engagement in your organization.

Elevate Performance

The best leaders I ever worked with helped me become better at what I was doing. This goes for athletic coaches, mentors, and supervisors. The best leaders always helped me become better. Proactive leadership is all about raising the performance of your team. Elevate the performance of each member of a team and the entire team performance is elevated.

To elevate performance, leaders should be having regular feedback and coaching sessions. It’s not enough simply to tell an employee what they can be doing better. That can lead to resentment, confusion or frustration. Leader not only tell someone how they can improve, but show them as well. Offer suggestions to improve productivity or customer service. If you don’t know, work with your team to find solutions that can show improvements.

Accountability

Believe it or not, your people like to be held accountable. Holding them accountable for doing their job is a sure-fire sign that their job is important. Accountability actually leads people to strive to do better. It isn’t necessarily the fear of being held accountable that motivates someone to succeeded. Success builds confidence and momentum. People genuinely like to be successful and it makes them feel good. We can all appreciate this, as we’ve all had days that were successful and others that just went down the drain. Which one makes you feel better at the end of the day?

Holding people accountable means, you, as the leader, need to hold yourself accountable. Hold regular meetings, or whatever form you use for accountability and stick to it. If you ask someone to finish a project by the end of the month, and wait until the end of the month to check for status, don’t be surprised when your team member lets you down. They let you down, because you didn’t tell them the project was important. Therefore, develop a schedule and a system for accountability, follow it, and watch your engagement sore.

Loyalty

Lastly, we all want our employees to be loyal. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of my readers will think that they have the most loyal employees. You’d be surprised. Loyalty is different than your team liking you, or liking the company. I read an article the other day saying that 80% of employees will start looking for a job after just ONE BAD DAY. So, unless you have the 20% of the workforce that will stay with you through a bad day (or month or quarter…) loyalty isn’t that easy to come by.

I have worked with companies where there is an us versus them mentality. Typically, it is employees versus management, but not always. Other examples would be one department versus another department or even worse, one click versus another click.

I have found that the best way to foster loyalty in the workplace is to show loyalty to your employees. Leaders become part of the team and are not positioned above it. Each case is different, but here are some ways you can build loyalty in your organizations:

When overtime is required, stay as late or come in on Saturday with them (and buy lunch)
Offer help, guidance and solution when a problem arises
Trust their expertise. It doesn’t have to be your way, they can be right too.
Get to know them on a personal level. People are more loyal to a friend than a colleague.

This Week’s Challenge

In conclusion, enhance your proactive management skills by focusing on these three areas – performance, accountability and loyalty. Even if you already have a loyal staff, and are doing these actions, give them a little extra effort. There is always room to improve employee engagement.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Accountability

January 21, 2019 By // by Andrew Shaffer

Over the last week, many people have discussed with me the need for accountability. This might be because the year is still fresh and people know that accountability is necessary to be successful. Whatever the reason, people seem to be looking for guidance on how to hold themselves accountable and how to hold others accountable. This week, I thought I’d share some thoughts on accountability to help you become more successful in business and in life for 2019!

Accountability

We all know that accountability is an important factor to success. Accountability is typically introduced through school. We were held accountable for doing our homework, and if we didn’t do it there was typically some form of consequence. As we move into adulthood, we enter the workforce and there is some accountability there to perform to a certain standard, or lose our job.

I have also found that as people enter adulthood, some people struggle with accountability. Either with holding themselves accountable, or even holding others accountable. Being accountable requires discipline, which can be a struggle for some people. This article is going to explore three aspects of accountability and how YOU can become more successful.

To Yourself

The first person you have to be accountable to is yourself. Now this is probably the hardest of the three categories. I know, from my own experience, once I was on my own certain aspects of accountability went out the window. I no longer had anyone telling me when to come home, when to get up or what to eat. Over time, I had to develop a system of holding myself accountable because the consequences were catching up to me.

Holding yourself accountable requires self-discipline and integrity. You have to be able to do the right thing, even if nobody is watching. This is the most important aspect of accountability and makes it possible to hold others accountable. This is leading by example. You will struggle to hold others accountable, if they see that you cannot hold yourself accountable. To be successful create a system of holding yourself accountable. Maybe an accountability partner, or support group can be beneficial. No matter what you choose to do to hold yourself accountable, DO NOT LET YOURSELF OFF THE HOOK when you slip.

To Your Company

Make a habit of accountability at your company. This applies to supervisors, peers and direct reports. You’d be surprised how much people actually appreciate being held accountable, and how much more you’ll be respected. In the workplace, this can be as simple as a follow up. When you assign tasks to direct reports, follow up to make sure they are done, and done to the level you expect.

When working with peers, follow the same advice. If you need support from your marketing department, or the leader of another team, be sure to follow up. When your boss promises she’ll get you the help you need, follow up with her. I realize holding your boss accountable might take a little political consideration, but if she is honest, she’ll appreciate the accountability. Afterall she expects it from you, right?

By holding people accountable for what they say, you not only help improve productivity, you also prove that what you asked for is important. Another way to look at it. If you asked someone that worked for you to provide a report on Monday, and you don’t read it, why did you ask for it? Sooner or later, it’ll give the impression to your team that the work isn’t important. If you offer support to someone and don’t follow through their trust in you will begin to erode.

To Your Customers

It doesn’t matter if you are in retail or provide a service, you have to be accountable to your customers and clients. This doesn’t mean the customer is always right, although you shouldn’t let them know that. This doesn’t mean you give the client everything they want. It DOES mean that you do what you say and say what you do. Last week I talked about the importance of your companies image and reputation. Being accountable to your clients means saying what you do and doing what you say.

Your customers come to you to fill a specific need or want. They also come with a certain level of expectations. Being accountable to your customers means meeting (or exceeding) those expectations each and every time you do business. Mistakes cannot always be avoided, it happens, but when mistakes do happen you take every reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) action necessary to regain that trust. Just like with being accountable to your company, once you lose the trust you may never have an opportunity to regain that trust

This Week’s Challenge

Develop a plan to focus on these three areas of accountability. Even if you already think you are focusing on accountability, take time to identify ways you can become even more effective. Adding accountability to your relationships with yourself, your company, and your customers will help your and your business grow.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Strategic Planning

November 26, 2018 By // by Andrew Shaffer

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Now it’s on to the next holiday season! This surely is a hectic time of the year. My wife and I were just looking at how busy we are this month! And, that was just stuff for the kids and didn’t include our obligations! During all this chaos, the holiday season is when many companies are finishing up their strategic planning. This week, I’d like to remind you of some things that will help your 2019 strategic plan be more successful!

Strategic Planning

Creating a strategic plan for the following year is a necessary and time-consuming effort most companies execute each and every year. You make assumptions, and contingency plans all in an attempt to predict what will happen next year and how you can continue to make money and ideally grow. In my years in leadership, management, and consulting, I know that the planning process is long and painful. I have also seen where an absolutely brilliant plan put together and as soon as it is time to execute, the plan tends to break apart. This could be from a variety of unforeseen circumstances or factors. Here are some things to consider when creating and executing your 2019 strategic plan.

Team Buy In

Unless you are a solo entrepreneur, you will most likely have to have team buy in to accomplish goals. Your team will most likely be the ones executing your plan on a day to day basis. It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand that people are more motivated and committed to executing something if they had some input into the plan. Dictating from the top often leads to resentment, and a minimal effort. It is not always feasible to have the entire company involved in the strategic planning, at least not directly, so how do you get everyone’s buy in?

Start with creating a compelling vision. A compelling vision will tell everyone on the team where they are going in 2019. You cannot use vague terms. Being a “world class” organization doesn’t give anyone a clear picture of the goal. In contract, “We’re going to the moon,” does. It is a goal that people can visualize, repeat and buy into.

Second, your vision should be compelling to your team members. The goal has to take them someplace they want to go! Employees will want to know what is in it for them.

Finally, everyone needs to know how they can contribute. Your strategic plan should outline how everyone in the organization contributes to the achievement of the goal. People will not buy into a plan if they do not think they matter in the final execution.

Accountability

Now that you have a plan and you have buy-in from your team, the next step is to set up accountability. Yes, accountability means making sure people do what they are expected to do and it is an important part of the equation. Accountability works best when people are able to hold each themselves, and each other, accountable. Peer pressure works with adults just as it does with our teenagers.

When developing your plan, and executing your plan, set up a framework for accountability. Have employees meet regularly (weekly if possible) to provide status on their responsibilities. In these meetings each week, have everyone commit to certain accomplishments each week. Accomplishments that will take them closer to their goal. These should be achievable in a week. Then have each member report on their progress each week. It is important to not allow excuses.

Setting weekly goals every week and achieving them is important to the overall progress. If your supply chain committed to having parts available for manufacturing, make sure the parts are available.

Flexibility

I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve planned and within weeks something doesn’t knocks us completely off track. Eventually the plan can become obsolete and difficult to manage. When you get off track from the original plan, but still need to accomplish a goal the weekly format can help provide a format for progress. By identifying weekly steps that are achievable within a week, you can keep moving forward.

When you do hit roadblocks, or your plan needs adjusted get your team to help identify solutions. Keep them focused on the goal and allow their creativity to flourish. You’d be surprised how creative your team can be when they are motivated and committed to a goal!

This Week’s Challenge

We all have to go through strategic planning. It is important and necessary. Keeping in mind that need to execute the plan and setting up framework that gets team buy in, holds members accountable and provides flexibility will improve your chances of success in 2019!

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

accountability