All about how to get Engaged Employees. Written by: Thomas Eckschmidt, Founder of Conscious Capitalism Brazil, CEO of CBJourney: the largest conscious capitalist consultant network in the world and an enthusiast of Happyforce
Some say their customers are their number one priority, others say their employees are the number one priority. No matter where you start, your employees are your point of contact of your business with the world out there, with all your stakeholders. Most of the companies that outperform the market by up to 7 times are the same companies applying the fundamentals of conscious capitalism. Companies like Whole Foods, Apple, H.E.B. Costco, and others place their employees first.
What does it mean to put employees first?
To put employees first you need to have a clear understanding of the purpose of your organization. Once this is clear, make sure you permeate this meaning throughout all areas of your organization. This will allow all employees to connect their work to a higher purpose and have meaning in the work they do. Without meaning or purpose established, you won’t be able to work on your employee engagement.
One interesting statistic to consider is, according to Gallup, only 30% of the workforce is actively engaged in their work – Only 3 out of 10. Imagine if you were to actively engage another team member, this would already represent a 33% improvement in productivity as well as in other organizational metrics.
The research statistics that Gallup conducts annually comes in the form of a global average. Of course, some company’s have much higher employee engagement. But once again, it is these same companies that invest in their employees, such as putting the employee’s wellbeing first, actively listening to them, and creating an environment of psychological safety.
Creating space for employees to make their contributions, and be heard by their leaders is a great facilitator to improve the team member’s performance.
Here is the million-dollar question:
To get engaged employees, where do we start?
In the same way, we mentioned before, a great place to start is to allow and create clear communication channels to listen to employees and allow them to make contributions. A common way to initiate communication can come in the form of employee surveys: Some companies participate in the GPTW survey, others create their own employee engagement surveys.
Surveys are a great starting point to understand where the organization stands. Other cultural assessments within the survey will allow us to explore where we want to go in terms of our corporate culture. These survey tools are valid to have a clear picture of the current state of the organization and the desired future stage of the organization, as well as understand the gap between them. The best way forward though is to start with the organization’s purpose, and from there define values that leverage this purpose. Most of the time, the values people are looking for might not be in line with the intention to leverage the organization’s purpose.
This might me a moment of clarity, where you must work to align the values and purpose to create your desired culture in your organization.
And remember, the values must be clearly defined so everyone understands their meaning. Next up, is actively recognizing the positive behaviors and practices that our employees do that best represent our corporate values. Why does this matter? Recognizing employees actions based on your company values highly impacts into creating a stronger culture since rewarded behaviors are often repeated.
So, with a clear purpose, and values that leverage our purpose, creating a space where all employees have a chance to positively contribute can create a phycological safety environment for improving employee engagement.
Are you ready to activate the fundamentals of conscious capitalism in your organization, reach out to www.CBActivator.cc and request you Conscious Business Activator to start this successful journey.
