Talent Engagement

Welcome back. Now I already told you we have a problem with employee engagement. Engagement continues to be a problem and we need to focus on it. We need to engage our people better, all of our people, not just our talent. But we have to really assure that we are engaging our talent so that we don’t lose them.

Research tells us that people join companies with lots of positive ambition. But without a concentration on what’s important to them, their mission, they may become unengaged very, very quickly. Remember what you learned in the on boarding section, it all starts before people even arrive on site in your team or your company. Be cognizant that your behaviors as a leader as a team leader is crucial to engaging and retaining talent.

The quality of leadership is crucial to turnover. You don’t want zero turnover, though, but you don’t want 30% either. Each industry, each company, each site is different. You want to make sure that you are infusing the environment with new blood, so to speak, all the time. But you can’t let your investment go out the door either. It will cost you double the salary to attract and retain a replacement, remember. You are responsible as a leader to keep the team and your talent engaged. And that’s just not a once a month kind of thing. That’s thinking about it almost every single day to assure that everybody remains engaged.

In addition to determining growth potential, risk and impact of loss of people and talent are important data elements for managers to capture and discuss during what I call the talent review process. And this should be part of the processes in your talent pipeline. The risk of loss are the probability that an employee will leave you. This is too high risk if they’re talented in your organization. This risk could be affected by job satisfaction, what they’re doing every day, the work at hand. It could be culture fit. They don’t fit in the culture.

It could be relationships or connections inside the company. It could be that they’re sitting next to a really negative person that creates this negative aura in the company and deteriorates how they feel when they walk in the door. It could be recent work life or life events that trigger departure, or it could be something happening in the job market, like a competitor showing them that the world could be better in another place.

The impact of loss asks that managers and team leaders determine the impact to the business. If somebody departs, the impact of this loss could be affected by the ability to replace that employee, their knowledge, or the level of competitive risk if the employee goes to a competitor. They take a lot of knowledge with them, a lot of IP. The difficulty of replacing an employee is great, and it’s great right now.

You have the ability to influence talent and employees in your teams and in your companies.

And you have the ability also to influence all of the stakeholders.

A manager determines the employee’s risk of loss and impact of loss. And you should be keeping track of that. And making sure that you can influence people to stay and grow, and lead. And take your company to the next level.

So how do we make a plan? The keys are really easy to remember. But granted it’s not easy to execute. If it were easy, we wouldn’t have the issues that we have with the talent pipeline. And with engagement. Talking to your team members is extremely high on the list. Knowing what they want, what they need to excel. Giving them the training, the development that is necessary for them to do their jobs and the next jobs that are coming forward. Inform them constantly about what’s going on in the team and in the company. I’ve said it before, communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more. Recognize them for what they do, what they accomplish.

Most important is to help them make meaning in their careers. Help them to see the bigger picture. Help them to see what position they play in the team or in the company, and how important that position is in moving the company forward. And don’t forget, even though it’s not number one of the list, you have to reward. You have to recognize. Recognize is totally, critically important. Here are some ideas to incorporate into your repertoire. Start your next meeting with allowing people to share something positive in their lives. We do that in all of my staff meetings, and it sets the stage for a good meeting, and it helps lighten the load.

Letting everybody talk about something, perhaps from home or perhaps at work that’s going positively, just makes the environment more energized and positive. Talking to every team member and getting their ideas out for creating a better environment for the team. How about taking everybody out to play at something, finding fun at work?

And if your culture allows it, embarrass them. Positively embarrass them with recognition.

Make sure you ask every one of your people what their passion is. Know what makes them tick and what makes their lives worthwhile. Have team members teach each other something. Remember what I said about teaching. If we teach something to somebody else, we remember it better and people get closer to us when we teach them. Allow your team members to teach other, and have your team members share their purpose for what they’re doing here, at work. Have everyone share lately what they’ve been up to. Have them share what they’re most proud of.

Think about a way that one of your leaders may have caused positive energy in your environment. Or something that you’ve done that has caused positive energy. Together, let’s brainstorm all of the fascinating things that we can share with each other, about creating positive energy in our teams and helping to move engagement forward. Tell stories, using those creative and colorful words, so that we remember some of the things you’ve done, or some of the things you’ve experienced, so that we may try it in our next team activity, or team event.