Your employees are costing you millions. And you don’t even realize it. Gallup reports that only 32% of American workers were engaged in their work in 2015. This costs US businesses between $450 and $500 billion dollars in lost productivity annually. Staggering, to say the least.

This is destroying your company and killing your career. Imagine a 20% jump in revenue, developers that program more quickly and innovativley and teams that independently solve the most challenging tasks on their own. Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%. There are big bucks at stake as nearly 70% of American workers are impacted.

So how do you engage employees to realize these productivity gains when the large majority are not? You need to start by understanding how people work best. We all have brains and need to use them. Poor management is a major factor but what people really need is for management to get out of their way.

Yes we are talking about changing corporate culture at an organization and empowering employees. This starts with the tone at the top. Management has to stop believing they need to do all the thinking for an organization. Your two weakest employees have significantly more brain power than you will ever have.

Here are some considerations that work for me to motivate and engage employees and teams:

Set High Expectations with Standards – and Communicate Them

The first step to buying into a vision or goal is to hear it. Lay it out to your people and communicate that the expectation is high because of the caliber of the team. Yup, it is their own fault for being smart, educated and experienced. Isn’t this why you hired them in the first place? You should have SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Phased).

Constant Follow up and Communication

This is where the world fails the employees. Follow up and feedback should be immediate and continuous – not annually like an employee review. Employees should always know where they stand on a project and their work overall.

Approach all communication about results the same way – whether positive or negative. We all do a great job providing kudos to an employee exceeding expectations. But the street needs to go both ways. If an employee fails to meet standards or a deadline then tell them and show them how they failed so they can improve next time. And it should be clear that you expect them to improve – and help them if necessary.

Do Not Provide Specifics on How to Complete a Task

Remember, you are tapping into an unused resource here and want your people engaged and thinking. How engaged will they be if you tell them exactly how to do something? Give them the task with the end result needed, major considerations and whisk them out to arrive at their own solution.
My employees typically come up with innovative solutions that are much better than mine. Sometimes the initial solution is less elegant than yours or doesn’t meet standards of excellence. In this case you help tweak the solution to get the desired result.

Protect, Protect, Protect Your Employees

Your people need to know that you have their back. Otherwise they will spend considerable resources surviving in a dangerous landscape. Nobody put this better than Simon Sinek in his Ted Talk Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe. All employee efforts should be directed towards the company and becoming more efficient, not surviving.

Allow Your Employees to Fail

You are asking people to arrive at innovative solutions and they need to be allowed to fail today to succeed long term. If the ramifications for a project are huge and must be done correctly the first time, then meet frequently to ensure things are moving in the right direction. Smaller, important but less critical tasks should be delegated completely. Make sure your door is always open for assistance or questions and be supportive.

Develop an Environment of Constant Innovation and Improvement

We want more than just excellence, we want improvement and you should expect it. An employee doing the same job for 4 months should get better at it and now can absorb more responsibility. So delegate away.

I also expect employees to improve their tasks to become more efficient. They need to ‘own’ their role to improve it. An employee ‘owns’ their role when they can provide detailed reasons about why something is done a certain way. “We have always done it this way” is an unacceptable answer.

Your efficiency and results will increase exponentially if the environment is right and employees are engaged. Shareholder value can be created at every employee level in an organization if management would just get out of the way. Reach out to me if you need assistance in engaging employees and becoming more profitable and efficient.

Sources:
https://www.archerybusiness.com/understanding-high-cost-unmotivated-employees
https://dynamicsignal.com/2017/04/21/employee-productivity-statistics-every-stat-need-know/
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe