Get – and keep! – the conversation going. Make
sure your managers have frequent meaningful conversations with each
individual member of their teams – and that this goes on well beyond the
6-month honeymoon. Encourage effective
communication in the company. People need to be asked about what they
like, what challenges they have, what tasks they’d want eliminated, what
changes they think should be made. Make sure your managers understand
the problem – any problem executives might have! One way to do this is
by making them have side-by-sides every 3 months. And even better – ask
them to pair these up with regular anonymous polls and surveys about
team well-being and team management.
Cultivate praise culture at work. Have managers take time at the end of each month to produce short appraisal reports on the top performers and share them with the team. Tell them to take every chance to commend employees when they do well. This will increase likelihood that, when they don’t do that well, they accept negative feedback and feel motivated to change, rather than reject it outright. Recognition and praise not only solve motivation in the short run, but they also build bonds and nourish team wellbeing in the long run.
Focus on strengths. A corollary of the praise culture is a mentality focused on employees’ strengths. Ask your managers to collect weekly employee reports on their strengths and associated goals. Ensure they understand these by asking them to also report back on the strengths of 5 people they work with. Round this up with a meaningful line manager – employee discussion about strengths every 3 months.
Cultivate praise culture at work. Have managers take time at the end of each month to produce short appraisal reports on the top performers and share them with the team. Tell them to take every chance to commend employees when they do well. This will increase likelihood that, when they don’t do that well, they accept negative feedback and feel motivated to change, rather than reject it outright. Recognition and praise not only solve motivation in the short run, but they also build bonds and nourish team wellbeing in the long run.
Focus on strengths. A corollary of the praise culture is a mentality focused on employees’ strengths. Ask your managers to collect weekly employee reports on their strengths and associated goals. Ensure they understand these by asking them to also report back on the strengths of 5 people they work with. Round this up with a meaningful line manager – employee discussion about strengths every 3 months.
Employ in-house task forces. It
is no wonder that engagement goes up in smaller, tight-knit teams.
Provide the context for these teams to be formed and assigned projects.
Use special communication groups to spread and share work-related
information. This will make employees feel special and singled out for
some particular type of ‘mission’. Selective or early access to
information, even when that is not classified, sends out a powerful
message of appreciation of an employee’s work and performance.
Provide adequate resources and tools. Once you have the task forces, make sure they get all the needed equipment, training and support. Give them tools to communicate easily, bespoke training plans and a budget to manage. Accountability and autonomy do wonders in terms of self-motivation. There’s nothing like an empowered employee, when it comes to business growth and innovation.
Have meaningful perks on offer. It’s easy enough to stay with the traditional flexi time or work from home. Ideally, you’re already paying maternal/paternal leave. But that’s not enough anymore. For benefits to be meaningful to your employees and show them you care, they have to be the extra mile. If a few of your employees are horse riding fans, get them a group subscription with a local club. If they’re big on trekking, organize a team retreat in the resort of their dreams. Some things they may not be able to afford normally, or would simply not be too high up on their expenses list. Go for those! Use a quick questionnaire to find out their interests and hobbies. Then act on those. Measurement without action is useless, as many have said over and over again.
Be transparent. No matter what, in good or bad times. You work on company audits on a regular basis either way. Share some of those with departments concerned. Tell them how you stand, as a business. They’ll understand the context sufficiently well to figure out their part in it and next steps. Go further and ask them for a top 3 recommended actions list, where each department can come up with local solutions to nudge growth. And if things are going well, reward and acknowledge them publicly!
Build company culture on an ongoing basis. Every employee impacts your company culture. Accept and embrace that. And after you do, tell employees about it. Hold yearly town halls where you can openly talk to them about the culture and how well they feel they’ve been welcomed in it. Ask them how it should adjust to reflect the team. Let them take charge here, because you’re growing the business together with them. Don’t forget to share and widely communicate each new company ‘policy’. You need their buy-in to make it into culture – so you might as well ask nicely and show them you value their help.
Push professional growth as well as personal development. People’s interests are varied – in and out of work. Seize the opportunity to give them as much support as they need to develop personally in a company context. Offer chances of lateral professional development as well as options for them to do volunteering, or pursue social responsibility projects they are inspired by. Set up a platform of communication on the topic, if nothing else! Give them a context and they’ll take it from there – and they’ll come back happier than ever!
Develop business acumen in all employees. It’s said that the most engaged employees are those that act and think like owners of the business. To have them do that, educate them about basic business measures. Explain to your people how every role impacts the bottom line. Also tell them how the company is doing on those – transparency, remember? – and they’ll find it a lot easier to focus their work. Give them the chance to send you a list with ways they can personally contribute to reaching company goals.
Gamify, gamify, gamify. Everybody loves some good fun. Use your learning management systems or internal communication platforms to engage your employees routinely with small games. These could relate to the workplace, regional objectives for the sales teams, getting to know your teammates, etc. Add small prizes at the end to motivate them, or simply get them hooked by holding a company-wide score that gets updated monthly. Seeing their names go high up the Fun List might be a bigger driver of engagement than you imagine!
Design and sponsor in-house mentor-ship. Send out a survey to find out what in-house mentor employees would like to partner up with. Then make those partnerships happen! Sponsor the mentorship program, along with training materials and time devoted from the company budget.
Start a learning club. There will surely be books of movies that are directly related to your work, as a business, or at least extremely relevant to it. If you didn’t take the chance to offer those books or DVDs as Diwali presents, you still have an option. Start a learning club, where people can discuss openly a book or a movie each month. Use internal communication platforms to inform them about the choice of the month. Send them teasers to generate interest before the meet-up. After the meet-up, ask participants to think about 3 things they learnt that can impact their work. Debating ideas and arguments will do wonders for team building! Not to mention you will become that leader or manager who actually takes time to talk about books with their teams.
Bring in motivational speakers. We all know this one and we all do it. But here’s the catch: what if that speaker is, in fact, any influencer that your employees have always wanted to meet? Send out a quick survey and give them the chance to nominate or make their pick from a host of options you’re thinking of. Then make sure they do their homework and send questions before the event. That way, you reward the diligent and also keep the conversation going with them.
Create an online Photo Wall. Whatever app it is you’re using right now, make sure it has that one section where all the team photos are posted. Social networks function so well because they place the onus back on the individual. And in the 21st century the culture of individuality is stronger than ever before. After each company event, ask your photographer to send over the 10-15 best shots and share them with everyone before the entire album is shared with the company. Keep your people coming back to the place where you communicate with them by also giving them a chance to reminisce about fond memories!
Have a monthly ‘CEO Reporting’ session. Instead of having your employees send reports higher up, how about you, the CEO, take some time to talk to them every month? And not just anyhow. Make a short video of yourself and post it on the online communication platform. You can even go further and send out 2 or more different such videos to selected groups of employees – for instance, only to managers, or only to the Finance Department. Take that chance to tell them again about the company purpose. Remember, millennials, especially, pick their jobs overwhelmingly based on that! And don’t forget to praise and give credit, where credit is due. It will all make for a great workplace memory – and it’ll be worth tons more than that usual trophy.
Provide adequate resources and tools. Once you have the task forces, make sure they get all the needed equipment, training and support. Give them tools to communicate easily, bespoke training plans and a budget to manage. Accountability and autonomy do wonders in terms of self-motivation. There’s nothing like an empowered employee, when it comes to business growth and innovation.
Have meaningful perks on offer. It’s easy enough to stay with the traditional flexi time or work from home. Ideally, you’re already paying maternal/paternal leave. But that’s not enough anymore. For benefits to be meaningful to your employees and show them you care, they have to be the extra mile. If a few of your employees are horse riding fans, get them a group subscription with a local club. If they’re big on trekking, organize a team retreat in the resort of their dreams. Some things they may not be able to afford normally, or would simply not be too high up on their expenses list. Go for those! Use a quick questionnaire to find out their interests and hobbies. Then act on those. Measurement without action is useless, as many have said over and over again.
Be transparent. No matter what, in good or bad times. You work on company audits on a regular basis either way. Share some of those with departments concerned. Tell them how you stand, as a business. They’ll understand the context sufficiently well to figure out their part in it and next steps. Go further and ask them for a top 3 recommended actions list, where each department can come up with local solutions to nudge growth. And if things are going well, reward and acknowledge them publicly!
Build company culture on an ongoing basis. Every employee impacts your company culture. Accept and embrace that. And after you do, tell employees about it. Hold yearly town halls where you can openly talk to them about the culture and how well they feel they’ve been welcomed in it. Ask them how it should adjust to reflect the team. Let them take charge here, because you’re growing the business together with them. Don’t forget to share and widely communicate each new company ‘policy’. You need their buy-in to make it into culture – so you might as well ask nicely and show them you value their help.
Push professional growth as well as personal development. People’s interests are varied – in and out of work. Seize the opportunity to give them as much support as they need to develop personally in a company context. Offer chances of lateral professional development as well as options for them to do volunteering, or pursue social responsibility projects they are inspired by. Set up a platform of communication on the topic, if nothing else! Give them a context and they’ll take it from there – and they’ll come back happier than ever!
Develop business acumen in all employees. It’s said that the most engaged employees are those that act and think like owners of the business. To have them do that, educate them about basic business measures. Explain to your people how every role impacts the bottom line. Also tell them how the company is doing on those – transparency, remember? – and they’ll find it a lot easier to focus their work. Give them the chance to send you a list with ways they can personally contribute to reaching company goals.
Gamify, gamify, gamify. Everybody loves some good fun. Use your learning management systems or internal communication platforms to engage your employees routinely with small games. These could relate to the workplace, regional objectives for the sales teams, getting to know your teammates, etc. Add small prizes at the end to motivate them, or simply get them hooked by holding a company-wide score that gets updated monthly. Seeing their names go high up the Fun List might be a bigger driver of engagement than you imagine!
Design and sponsor in-house mentor-ship. Send out a survey to find out what in-house mentor employees would like to partner up with. Then make those partnerships happen! Sponsor the mentorship program, along with training materials and time devoted from the company budget.
Start a learning club. There will surely be books of movies that are directly related to your work, as a business, or at least extremely relevant to it. If you didn’t take the chance to offer those books or DVDs as Diwali presents, you still have an option. Start a learning club, where people can discuss openly a book or a movie each month. Use internal communication platforms to inform them about the choice of the month. Send them teasers to generate interest before the meet-up. After the meet-up, ask participants to think about 3 things they learnt that can impact their work. Debating ideas and arguments will do wonders for team building! Not to mention you will become that leader or manager who actually takes time to talk about books with their teams.
Bring in motivational speakers. We all know this one and we all do it. But here’s the catch: what if that speaker is, in fact, any influencer that your employees have always wanted to meet? Send out a quick survey and give them the chance to nominate or make their pick from a host of options you’re thinking of. Then make sure they do their homework and send questions before the event. That way, you reward the diligent and also keep the conversation going with them.
Create an online Photo Wall. Whatever app it is you’re using right now, make sure it has that one section where all the team photos are posted. Social networks function so well because they place the onus back on the individual. And in the 21st century the culture of individuality is stronger than ever before. After each company event, ask your photographer to send over the 10-15 best shots and share them with everyone before the entire album is shared with the company. Keep your people coming back to the place where you communicate with them by also giving them a chance to reminisce about fond memories!
Have a monthly ‘CEO Reporting’ session. Instead of having your employees send reports higher up, how about you, the CEO, take some time to talk to them every month? And not just anyhow. Make a short video of yourself and post it on the online communication platform. You can even go further and send out 2 or more different such videos to selected groups of employees – for instance, only to managers, or only to the Finance Department. Take that chance to tell them again about the company purpose. Remember, millennials, especially, pick their jobs overwhelmingly based on that! And don’t forget to praise and give credit, where credit is due. It will all make for a great workplace memory – and it’ll be worth tons more than that usual trophy.
