“Fewer than 1 in 3 employees are engaged”
Employee engagement describes the level of enthusiasm and dedication a worker feels toward his/her job. Engagement is often measured on the employee’s contribution to the company and how satisfied a worker feels with their job role.

An engaged employee cares about their work and about the performance of the company; an unengaged employee will feel unenthusiastic and de-motivated, which is detrimental to business if the worker no longer “gives his all”. Blessing White, a company that specialise in employee engagement, published the Employee Engagement Report 2011, an online survey completed by 11,000 individuals across the globe. The report showed that “fewer than 1 in 3 employees world-wide (31%) are engaged…and nearly 1 in 5 (17%) are actually disengaged.”

The report also shows that older people, those in managerial positions and long-term employees are the most likely to be en-gaged. Also, career development and training were found to be amongst the most val-ued aspects of job satisfaction.

Another important factor linked to em-ployee engagement is the relationship between a team and its manager. If a worker does not have a good relation-ship with his/her manager, they may begin to feel unsatisfied with their working environment and their job. This could ultimately affect their per-formance which in turn will affect the company.
Joke Corner

A great way to analyse and develop your team’s specialist skills…

Put employees into a room with only a table and two chairs.

Leave them without any instruction and check back on them in two hours.

If they have taken the table apart… assign them to engineering.
If they are counting butts in the ashtray… put them in finance.
If they are talking to the chairs… assign them to personnel.
If they are sleeping… they are management material.
If they do not notice when you walk in… place them in security.
And if they have left early… put them in sales.

Top Tips for Managers
How do I find out if my team is engaged?

How do I find out if my team is engaged?

Surveys are a good way in which to measure the level of employee engagement within a company.

“Great Place to Work? and “Best Company” and two of the most popular engage-ment surveys available.

According to Best Companies:

“Improvements in engagement can be made in many areas and the key con-cepts are trust, listening, flexible working and the avoidance of the long hours culture.”
Top Tips for Managers

Different people need to be managed in different ways, are you able to adapt your management style?

  • Show you care about the future of each individual in your team, listen to their views and worries.
  • Help each individual grow their talent, look at their skills and what they enjoy doing, if a worker faces a challenge, coach them so that they can overcome it themselves.

If you want to improve engagement, what can be done?

Feedback
The most important thing to do is to feedback the results and then tackle the issues. If for example, team members feel that they are not given enough responsibility, look at tasks or projects you could delegate to your team so that they feel more involved. If the issue is that they feel you only communi-cate with them when something goes wrong, look at organising pro-gress reviews every few months and make sure to give positive feedback when a job has been done well.

Communication
If you find communicating with others challenging or you aren?t sure how to begin engaging with your team, you may wish to con-sider coaching as an option. An experienced coach will be able to help you dissect your managerial style and look at ways in which to improve any problem areas.

Team Building
Another way to bring a team together is to organ-ise a team-building day. There are a great number of fun and challenging activities to take part in. This is an excellent way for a team to get to know one another within an informal setting where no management levels act as barriers.

If you are interested in getting your team to com-plete an engagement survey please find more in-formation below:
http://www.bestcompanies.co.uk//AboutWIT.aspx
http://www.thegoodbosscompany.com/default.asp
http://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/services/assess-your-organisation

For more information regarding managerial coaching sessions please contact:Andrea.gregory@peoplebusiness.co.uk

For team building activity ideas please see the links below:
The Gourmet Challenge
Wine-Tasting
Best Books to read on the topic of employee engagement:

  1. How To Manage by Jo Owen
  2. Good Boss, Bad Boss by Robert I Sutton
  3. Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar
  4. Employee Engagement?The People First Approach to Building a Business by David Croston
  5. The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement by Sarah Cook
  6. The Rules of Engagement by Rich McLaughlin
 Do you engage your staff? Seven questions to ask yourself:

  • How often do you take a real interest in something a member of your staff is doing outside of work?
  • How often do you say thank you, well done or offer some praise for something someone has done?
  • Do you encourage your staff to learn news skills?
    How often do you give feedback on the work your staff are doing?
  • How often do you give your staff more responsibility?
  • How often do you have team meetings?
  • How often do you use team meetings as an opportunity to acknowledge individual performance?

Agony Aunt Lisa Bolton answers your work worries…
Dear Lisa, I’ve just started a new job managing a team of 5. I tried to make a good impression by being positive and yet firm.

The team seem unresponsive and unenthusiastic. I don’t want to lose my new job when I’ve only just started.
What can I do?

Jane, Hampshire
Lisa: Employee engagement is key to a business.

If your employees aren’t giving 100% then your business will be affected. To learn more about what is going on within your team you should ask yourself a few questions?is it really all of the team or just some individuals who are disengaged?
Are they only disengaged at certain times of the week or when completing certain tasks?

Speak to each employee individually. Discuss their concerns and yours and agree some goals for moving forward. It is a good idea to arrange to meet with your team for regular one to ones to help develop working relationships with each member of your team. Are they disinterested and bored or do they feel that in thepast their skills have been ignored? Once you know what the issues are you can begin to address them.

In the one to ones it might be helpful to ask them a bit about what they ex-pect from you as their manager, it could well be that there are things that you are doing inadvertently that are making things worse. Are there any other managers who know this team well that could offer you a bit of advice on the history and background of the team?

There could well be issues that pre date your leadership of the team. Is there another more experienced manager that could be a sounding board for you once you have carried out your first set of one to ones? Just to provide a bit of support around how you use what you learn from your staff to move things forward.

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