On their way to work in the morning, your employees are thinking about the infinite number of things that need to get done that day, the consequences if certain tasks are not completed, and likely a whole host of personal issues that they are experiencing. Your question, as a leader of these people, should be: how can I improve their everyday lives so that they are happier and more productive at work?
The answer: Make your talent feel like they are more than a number. Empower them to achieve both personal and professional success at work. This means enjoying an organizational culture that is human focused.
Entrepreneur magazine notes that “Every step of the employee lifecycle offers an opportunity to improve the human experience in the workplace.”
Of course, the idea sounds great, but the important piece is the implementation. Here are some employee engagement ideas to improve the everyday lives of your personnel:
Everyday Interactions
Each work day contains numerous interactions between colleagues. Some of these are productive; others are frustrating. If you provide your employees with intel that informs them how to best approach each colleague individually, those frustrating interactions can be converted into productive ones.
Let’s say that once a week you have to work with Bill on a report. You dread this collaboration each week because he is so impatient and does not take the time to work through the details. But before your next meeting with him, you are given his temperamental profile. You are shown that his natural temperament is to be driving and independent, meaning he has a constant sense of urgency and dislikes working within a restrictive structure. You can now appreciate his natural tendency to move the project along and his outside the box thinking when you hit roadblocks. You now also know that because your profile strength lies in working with details and his does not, you should be the one to handle that aspect of the work. Now when you meet with Bill, you have a better understanding of who he is and how to best work together.
Imagine the understanding and therefore productivity that would occur if you were to empower your entire workforce like this!
Team Effectiveness
Team effectiveness takes those everyday interactions and then adds more people to the mix. Now there are additional people to work with and therefore understand. Taking the time to run team activities that support this knowledge and approach go a long way for improving the everyday lives of employees.
Employee Development
As an organization with a people-focused culture that values individuals’ uniqueness, wouldn’t it make sense to cater employee development to each individual? (I’ll just imagine you’re nodding your head here)
Create development options for different learning styles to ensure that each employee gets the most out of their training. We even provide a Self-Development Report that addresses the employee directly, so they can gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, encouraging additional development.
A engaged workforce is a happy workforce, one that will want to stay and grow in their environment. Retain and develop your talent by weaving human elements throughout everyday life and therefore organizational culture.