CREATING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN FIVE ‘EASY’ STEPS

By Alex Zlatin

Ilove the definition the folks at CustomInsight.com give for employee engagement: “Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization and put discretionary effort into their work.”

It describes three distinct criteria that must coexist to create true employee engagement:

Feel passionate about their jobs. This is the first step and the one discussed in this article. Organizations and leaders must strive to instil the feeling of trust with not only their clients but with employees, too. Commitment to the organization. Some employee actions cannot be explained through simple rationale. These actions can be explained through dedication to the company or to an organization’s cause. This dedication will empower employees through stressful situations and allow them to stay focused on the goal and achieve success.

Putting discretionary effort in their

work. This is the only criteria that is visible to peers and colleagues and can be seen as a result of high employee engagement, where in fact it is a decision an employee makes daily.

This article aims to provide a practical guide to begin your journey toward facilitating high employee engagement in your organization. This journey is a long and ungrateful one. It takes organizations, whether mature or at their startup stage, and structures them to be successful and scalable. The journey is not easy and requires time and a strong commitment from the executive team.

Through implementing the five steps below, you will set yourself and the company up to allow employee growth and mutual trust.

Identify required personality

for each position. Traditionally, managers and HR professionals focus on skills for each position. However, looking back at my experience, ‘not the right fit’ has usually been the root cause of employee departure. And that was based on a conflict between their personality and the company’s culture. For example, my company has a culture where employees are encouraged to take responsibility and be accountable for their tasks. This might not be a good fit for people who prefer to follow a protocol from a thick booklet of their job description.

Understanding each position in your organization is about your ability to close your eyes and envision the perfect person in that role. Now, take all the personality traits and move to the next step.

Successfully identify/classify the personalities of existing employees and candidates.

This is probably the one thing I get asked most often wherever I public speak. Truth is, in a perfect world, you would look at your company’s core values first. They represent two things: personality traits and expected behaviour for all employees. Start with these and assess whether each employee or candidate exhibits them. If you find some fall short, that does not necessarily mean they are a bad fit for the company. It might just be an indication they are not in the right position.

In today’s complex work environment, it makes sense to look for people who are curious, inquisitive, adventurous, persistent and have integrity. These happen to be the five core values in my company.

Match positions and employ-

ees based on personality. This step reveals its own answer once you go about the previous two correctly. Consider yourself a matchmaker, matching between the positions available (and their respective personality needs) and your employees or candidates (and their respective personalities).

Although this sounds like a trivial step, it can be fairly complex at times as a lot of roles actually require similar personality traits. The trick here is to look closely and more in-depth into each of the roles.

I encourage all hiring managers and HR professionals to work alongside department managers and team leads to learn as much as possible about the roles for which you are hiring. That alone can substantially increase the probability of a successful hire.

Coach employees to explore the full scope of their positions and take daily steps outside their comfort zone toward realizing their

potential. Executives, management and HR professionals in an organization must take it upon themselves to be leaders. As such, it is our responsibility to coach all employees.

But what does it mean to ‘coach?’

To coach is the ability to support our peers, team members and colleagues through training and guidance. So, in essence and a perfect world, all employees in a company will take a leadership stance, at least as far as their role and team is concerned.

Returning to reality, it is our duty to ensure each employee is able to develop new skills, gain professional growth and push toward realizing their potential. This can only be achieved through many face-to-face conversations and identifying areas to explore and conquer.

Build, foster and encourage ‘line of sight,’ consistently and repeat-

edly. This step is not necessary to achieve engagement but is crucial if you want to maintain it long-term. ‘Line of sight’ is a term used to describe an employee’s ability to explain how their work fits into the organization’s plans and strategy. If you are able to achieve this, you are guaranteed long-term employee engagement. Your team’s ability to realize they are a part of something bigger and meaningful is the crown achievement of a leader and proof all previous efforts and hardships were worth it.

Like all worthwhile things in life, this requires maintenance. The key to maintaining this is repetition. When leaders are committed to empowering their teams by sharing information about future plans and upcoming changes, and allowing their colleagues to participate in planning and decision-making, you create an environment that makes company goals transparent and allows employees to commit to them, while incorporating them into their day-to-day work.

Post-pandemic organizations and leaders are starting to change the focus of business. The history of business focus started with putting attention on profit and then on clients. But the change being implemented by many organizations worldwide is shifting the focus toward employees. The logic is simple: If you focus on profit, you disappoint clients and employees at times. If you focus on clients, your employees might suffer and that can hinder profit. However, if you focus on your employees, which means creating engagement, they will take care of clients and that will take care of profit.

I recommend we all focus on how we can create an environment of transparency, communication, passion, drive and continuous learning. This is the road to happiness, wellness and engagement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Zlatin, author of the book Responsible Dental Ownership, had more than 13 years of management experience before he accepted the position of CEO of dental practice management company, Maxim Software Systems. He earned a master of business administration at Edinburgh Business School and a bachelor or science in technology management at Holon Institute of Technology in Israel.