If there is one thing that still amazes me it is that organizations spend large amounts of money on employee surveys when the economy is bad. Just by looking around the immediate area in an office and by listening to internal communication channels should make it clear that most employees are only worried about their job and how to keep it. There are two issues about this relating to the economic crisis, and firstly the issue is how leaders will be able to inspire their organization through team leadership. The second issue is what one should look out for to measure employee engagement.
Let's look at how to inspire your employees through team dynamics. Now the first thing is that change must take place and this change should involve you getting employees to be active when it comes to understanding the business part of the job and how they can make a difference or contribution. This is one way to do that. 1. Present real data about your business and share it with your employees at all levels especially when it comes to dealing with customers. 2. Let your employees share ideas on how they can improve the service of your company or what product you should be selling that you can test in a market in small ways, like a specific territory of sales. 3. Test those ideas that have merit for six weeks and then ask those employees who suggested the ideas to measure the results. 4. Focus on the ideas that have shown an improvement in sales and then make sure to include those ideas to the state or even to the nationwide sales activities if you have an organization that large. 5. Recognize the people behind the great ideas based on the results of those ideas so that you can start to give your workers a reason to contribute and not be disengaged.
It's not so difficult, listen to employees and defer to them for advice, instead of just providing a list of tasks, emphasize the importance of their ideas by recognizing their efforts openly. This is how your company can grow and improve team dynamics and demonstrate transformational leadership that will help your company in dire times.
It is also important to make sure that the organizational change strategy and the communication management you decide on has explicit responsibilities and activities for the leadership team. Many times we just assume that it is only employees that worry about their jobs, but also managers have that insecurity and the employees under them look up to them for needed support and assurance. Planning organizational change requires that you clearly define activities and responsibilities for all members of the company. How does this relate to our last example? Basically you need to plan certain activities like; 1. Managers who share organizational information with their teams and discuss it with them transform their organization 2. Managers will display transformational leadership and team communication to pick the best ideas to be tested on chosen markets. 3. Managers will demonstrate leadership effectiveness by implementing the testing and collecting results to further discuss with their employees. 4. Senior management will make decisions on which strategies were most effective in bringing about the needed change. 5. The management team will work closely with the human resources department to come up with a recognition and incentives program to motivate their teams.
Now what should be done with employee engagement surveys? I suggest that you save all that spent money that is wasted on them and just sit back and think about a transformational leadership and change management plan like the one that is mentioned above. This will improve communications, make ideas be of a certain value and ensure that actions are taken to make those ideas work. These are all the steps that are needed to encourage employees to stay focused, and this will give them a purpose and even give them better confidence about their stability in your company because they will be helping in shaping the future of it, instead of just doing what they are told to do. Change your budgeting mindset, and focus on low cost strategies that present more opportunity, growth and innovation and the results of that on business will be the measure of employee engagement, with no survey needed.
Let's look at how to inspire your employees through team dynamics. Now the first thing is that change must take place and this change should involve you getting employees to be active when it comes to understanding the business part of the job and how they can make a difference or contribution. This is one way to do that. 1. Present real data about your business and share it with your employees at all levels especially when it comes to dealing with customers. 2. Let your employees share ideas on how they can improve the service of your company or what product you should be selling that you can test in a market in small ways, like a specific territory of sales. 3. Test those ideas that have merit for six weeks and then ask those employees who suggested the ideas to measure the results. 4. Focus on the ideas that have shown an improvement in sales and then make sure to include those ideas to the state or even to the nationwide sales activities if you have an organization that large. 5. Recognize the people behind the great ideas based on the results of those ideas so that you can start to give your workers a reason to contribute and not be disengaged.
It's not so difficult, listen to employees and defer to them for advice, instead of just providing a list of tasks, emphasize the importance of their ideas by recognizing their efforts openly. This is how your company can grow and improve team dynamics and demonstrate transformational leadership that will help your company in dire times.
It is also important to make sure that the organizational change strategy and the communication management you decide on has explicit responsibilities and activities for the leadership team. Many times we just assume that it is only employees that worry about their jobs, but also managers have that insecurity and the employees under them look up to them for needed support and assurance. Planning organizational change requires that you clearly define activities and responsibilities for all members of the company. How does this relate to our last example? Basically you need to plan certain activities like; 1. Managers who share organizational information with their teams and discuss it with them transform their organization 2. Managers will display transformational leadership and team communication to pick the best ideas to be tested on chosen markets. 3. Managers will demonstrate leadership effectiveness by implementing the testing and collecting results to further discuss with their employees. 4. Senior management will make decisions on which strategies were most effective in bringing about the needed change. 5. The management team will work closely with the human resources department to come up with a recognition and incentives program to motivate their teams.
Now what should be done with employee engagement surveys? I suggest that you save all that spent money that is wasted on them and just sit back and think about a transformational leadership and change management plan like the one that is mentioned above. This will improve communications, make ideas be of a certain value and ensure that actions are taken to make those ideas work. These are all the steps that are needed to encourage employees to stay focused, and this will give them a purpose and even give them better confidence about their stability in your company because they will be helping in shaping the future of it, instead of just doing what they are told to do. Change your budgeting mindset, and focus on low cost strategies that present more opportunity, growth and innovation and the results of that on business will be the measure of employee engagement, with no survey needed.
About the Author:
Marcia Xenitelis is a recognized authority on the subject on transformational leadership and change management and has spoken at conferences around the world. For access to case studies and more information on the types of strategies you can implement to engage employees visit www.transformational-leadership.com for a wealth of free informative articles and resources.
