Engaged Employees Improve Your Results
By Ann Elliott
Why does a team of smart people produce poor results? It do
es not make sense when the people you hire cost more than they are worth and it is frustrating.
There is a correlation between good business results and engaged employees.
Unless employees feel connected to your business purpose as well as to others in the organization, especially direct supervisors and colleagues, they are operating in a vacuum. Employees need to know that their work matters.
Employees want to have input into the way they do their work. It is important to remember that the experts are the folks doing the work, not the leaders or managers or outside consultants.
Recently in working with a team in a non-profit, the people responsible for producing acknowledgement letters to donors found a better way to process the letters. They recognized the problem of tardy thank you letters and found the solution without a directive from upper management. As a result, this team sees how they affect the organization by the work they do on a daily basis. They know that they matter.
With excellent policy, process and procedures, good employees can produce excellent results. When your business has these guidelines in place and employees trained to use them, you can trust your employees. Your need to micromanage dissolves.
The moment you hire a new employee, they are looking for validation that they made a good decision to join your company.
According to The Outstanding Organization by Karen Martin, a new hire on the first day with your company needs the following. Unless it is 100 percent of the time for each hire, you are actively disengaging employees when they are most receptive to engagement.
How does your on boarding process compare to Martin’s list of must do?
es not make sense when the people you hire cost more than they are worth and it is frustrating.
There is a correlation between good business results and engaged employees.
Unless employees feel connected to your business purpose as well as to others in the organization, especially direct supervisors and colleagues, they are operating in a vacuum. Employees need to know that their work matters.
Employees want to have input into the way they do their work. It is important to remember that the experts are the folks doing the work, not the leaders or managers or outside consultants.
Recently in working with a team in a non-profit, the people responsible for producing acknowledgement letters to donors found a better way to process the letters. They recognized the problem of tardy thank you letters and found the solution without a directive from upper management. As a result, this team sees how they affect the organization by the work they do on a daily basis. They know that they matter.
With excellent policy, process and procedures, good employees can produce excellent results. When your business has these guidelines in place and employees trained to use them, you can trust your employees. Your need to micromanage dissolves.
The moment you hire a new employee, they are looking for validation that they made a good decision to join your company.
According to The Outstanding Organization by Karen Martin, a new hire on the first day with your company needs the following. Unless it is 100 percent of the time for each hire, you are actively disengaging employees when they are most receptive to engagement.
How does your on boarding process compare to Martin’s list of must do?
- Physical: desk, properly coded access badges, business cards, layout or campus map, etc.
- Technology: phones, desktop/laptop, log-ins, email, business cards, all relevant software applications and access to them, etc.
- Unambiguous description of employee benefits: insurance, retirement, paid time off, etc.
- Various resources: organization chart, user guides, company directory, key policies, process descriptions, standard work, etc.
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