Tracy Stanley

Consultant | Author

Articles

What makes employee engagement programs work?

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Formalised programs are often used to enhance employee engagement in large organisations. These programs typically involve employee surveys, communication activities and action planning. It is hoped these undertakings will identify where changes can be made to improve employee engagement and to facilitate those changes. It is also hoped that as engagement increases, so too will business performance.  

Photo taken in Silver Chefs offices in Vancouver, Canada

It’s a big ask… 

…not least because employee engagement is a complex concept with actions requiring an appreciation of human behaviour and motivation, team climate and organisational culture. 

I’ve been interested in employee engagement for a while and have been chatting with human resource colleagues about their experiences in supporting employee engagement initiatives. Human resource practitioners and corporate communication teams typically carry responsibility for delivery of employee engagement programs. Because of this, I was interested in obtaining their insights into: 

  1. What employee engagement was?
  2. What factors most contributed to employee engagement?
  3. What were the biggest drivers of disengagement?
  4. What were the biggest obstacles to increasing engagement?
  5. What support or resources were critical for success?
  6. If they had to do it again (‘it’ being a large engagement program), what would they do differently?
  7. What things most influenced their own engagement?

They gave me rich perspectives in each area. A synthesis of what they shared follows. 

 1. What is employee engagement?

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How socialization influences our reluctance or enthusiasm for being creative

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Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash

For many of us the things that influence the way we think and see the world are invisible to us. Just like the proverbial goldfish not seeing the water it is swimming in.

So how do we see what was previously unseen?

Do you remember the first time you went overseas and how bizarre it felt when people looked and behaved differently to those folks at home?

Or maybe you had started a new job and the way things got planned or meetings were convened made you feel like you were from another planet?

These experiences help us to identify what we perceive as ‘normal’ behaviour in our usual world. 

I heard a wonderful story about socialisation when I was interviewing people for our book Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools. My interviewee told a story about when he was an exchange student with an English family. He was French. He expressed his surprise at seeing how English people always have their hands under the table before a meal started. This was a small thing but bizarre for him and so different to his own cultural orientation. It wasn’t until he was confronted by a different type of behaviour that he could see his own more clearly. His English friends were equally confronted by a strange cultural experience when they came to stay at his house where they were equally overwhelmed by the amount of kissing going on.

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How the best leaders encourage creativity

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Photo credit: Hudson Hintze on Unsplash

Can you remember a leader who encouraged you to think differently?
What questions did they ask? How did they behave with you and with others?

Your responses to these questions will give you insights into how leaders make it feel safe for you to speak up or to experiment with a new idea. Having the right environment is key for creativity to flourish and the leader’s behaviour is key to creating this environment. In the right environment team members will be curious, ask lots of questions and seek out new information.

Barbara Wilson and I have put together some useful insights into the role of the leader as a coach and facilitator that may help you in your efforts to encourage creativity. If you are the leader of a team you have multiple roles such as facilitator and coach. Let’s look at these roles in turn.

Leader as facilitator

Facilitation is an important and often undervalued competence. As a facilitator you will typically use a combination of individual reflection and group processes to get the best ideas and to help eliminate conformity of thinking.

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