High Workplace Engagement

I have finished an article on Workplace engagement and thought I'd share some thoughts here for business owners and managers on how to create a culture where engagement can thrive.

• Make the environment a fun and enjoyable place to be
• Recognise and reward staff achievement
• Set the performance bar high and work with your people for the achievement of such
• Create an advancement path providing training opportunities, stretch targets, small project responsibility – assisting them to be all that they can be
• Listen to your employees asking for their improvement suggestions and actioning as appropriate
• Take an active interest in your people seeking to understand their internal drivers and motivators and working with them accordingly
• Express how much you value their contribution
• Conduct performance reviews on a regular basis. I would suggest quarterly. These need to be mutually involved discussions and even held over lunch for key people
• If you incentivise, try to tailor it to the individuals internal motivators or to team performance
• Get consistency in team meetings sharing your vision, company values and goals
• Lead with transparency, openness and honesty
• Eat together. This is both one of my observations in my consulting work and also one of the factors in the Australian Workplace Awards. Those who engage in social activities particularly around food tend to demonstrate higher engagement than those who don’t.
• Provide some level of autonomy for workers with other benefits beside financial considerations. These might be the opportunity to work from home a couple of days a week, moving toward performance based work practices as opposed to purely time based, flexible hours etc.