Donna's Blog
Employee Engagement ... what does it take?
- Details
- 06 October 2015
There’s a lot written about employee engagement, and a lot of money spent (invested?) by organisations with this in mind. A lot of the effort seems also to be around the organisation needing to do something to engage employees. I wonder what would happen if employees decided to show up engaged.
This cartoon by Genildo Ronchi was doing the rounds on Facebook recently, and it got me thinking again about engagement, and how it reminded me of the ‘balanced work/life’ movement that was so huge in the 90’s. It was always hard for an organisation to nail a good ‘balance’ policy because ‘balance’ just meant so many different things to so many different people depending on maturity, amongst other things.
Engagement could be the same thing in terms of being different for many people. Rather than focusing on all the things organisations could DO to people to engage them, what if we decided to show up engaged.
I wonder what that would take?
Remember the famous Pike Place Fish Market “Fish Philosophy”? It was all about deciding to show up engaged to our workplace, no matter how early, wet cold and smelly it was. Their four tenements were:
- Choose your attitude
- Play/Have Fun
- Make their day
- Be There
I’m not sure that these are completely outdated, but I reckon they could use a bit of a revamp.
I think if we want to become more engaged in our work, we need to:
-
- DECIDE how we are going to show up. What is the personal brand we want to project and the legacy we want to leave?
- Be our AUTHENTIC selves and set a strong intention to build positive working relationships with the people we work with.
- ACKNOWLEDGE those people around us who help and support us in the work we do. If we were writing an academic paper would we not cite our sources? If we were writing a book, would we not attribute appropriately? In work, we need to acknowledge those that provide the inputs into our successes.
- Practice MINDFULNESS as much as possible. When we are in a meeting, be in the meeting. When we are having a one on one, be with that person. When we are giving a presentation, writing an email, preparing a document, be in that moment.
Not much more to it, really. Thoughts?
#makingworkwork #makingHRwork
