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Set the Stage for Engagement

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Low pay is a dissatisfaction for employees but high pay by itself won’t keep the best people around. Transactional leadership might be a motivator when money and better benefits are available, but today’s climate seems to lend itself more to transformational leadership where a caring leadership can stimulate innovation, creative thinking, and productivity.

In Healing the Wounds, David A. Noer writes how the emotional impact of downsizing and the subsequent extra workload disturbs employee morale and productivity long after the fact. The study found that such feelings of stress, fatigue, and depression can last five years and more, imposing a strain on organizations’ competitiveness. Not only was there a sense of unfairness and anger over top management pay and severance, but symptoms of insecurity, anxiety, and fear that discouraged innovation and creative thinking. As Noer wrote, “There seemed to be a much stronger feeling among lay-off survivors that the organization was not in the business of looking out for its employees and that their loyalty was to themselves and to their unit, not to the overall organization.”

Clearly, after as much as five years, employees still suffered from the “survivor-blaming phenomenon,” as Noer called it. Managers and their staffs were unhappy and could be easily tempted to check out other job possibilities if they surfaced. New recruits heard stories that made them question their decision to join the company ranks.

Gallup, one of the world’s top research organizations, has always found the ratio of engaged to disengaged employees to be problematic. The recent economy would suggest the situation to have become more severe. This would suggest a review of corporate management practices to see that these 12 elements as proposed by Gallup are supported within the organization:

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About the Author

Florence Stone is editorial director for AMA and editor of MWorld, AMA’s quarterly membership journal. She is the author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring, The Manager’s Question and Answer Book and The Essential New Manager’s Kit.

To learn more about the American Management Association, click here.

Lock in and Engage Top Talent

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In good times and bad, organizations have learned about the impact of thinking that employees are dispensable. Such thought is particularly unwise as the economy improves after a downturn.

During the past few years, companies have lopped off employees in the hundreds of thousands for reasons of economic survival. The staff gaps that resulted are now being felt as those same companies are faced with competition both for business and the top talent they still possess.

Slowly, we are seeing a shift from a buyer’s to a seller’s labor market. There may be a high unemployment problem but HR executives are still complaining about a significant skill gap, that is, a difference in proficiency between the majority of individuals in the market for jobs and those that companies want in their labor force.

Rather than having just a replacement mentality, human resources needs a more strategic approach to the situation—one that finds answers to the coming high turnover. They need a solution that also addresses the bad reputation that the recession has wrought on many companies and that identifies cultural changes that will attract new employees.

Evidence has shown a high correlation between employee job satisfaction and engagement and employee retention and recruitment.

Here are some strategies to engage and retain top talent:

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About the Author

Florence Stone is editorial director for AMA and editor of MWorld, AMA’s quarterly membership journal. She is the author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring, The Manager’s Question and Answer Book and The Essential New Manager’s Kit.

To learn more about the American Management Association, click here.

StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 36 – The Warning Signs of Employee Disenfranchisement

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 36 – The Warning Signs of Employee Disenfranchisement explores the warning signs of employee disenfranchisement; indicators that lost productivity, contribution and rising attrition may be eminent. During our discussion, Michael Lee Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity and co-Founder and President of E Pluribus Partners, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the benefits leaders realize as a result of better engaging their employees
  • observable behaviors, policies, and organizational structures that disenfranchise employees
  • precursor indicators that can be used as an ‘early warning system’ to detect the onset of employee disenfranchisement
  • processes, monitoring systems, and performance measures leaders can use to recognize the onset of disenfranchisement
  • the extent leaders should enlist the assistance of outside advisors to evaluate their business environment and workforce sentiments and the benefits of doing so
  • key attributes separating leaders who successfully engage employees from those who do not

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Michael shares in Fired Up or Burned Out and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from his websites, www.FiredUpOrBurnedOut.com, www.EPluribusPartners.com, and www.MichaelLeeStallard.com. Michael’s Connection Culture Manifesto can be downloaded for free by clicking here. His book, Fired Up or Burned Out, can be purchased by clicking here.

A special gift for StrategyDriven readers…

We are pleased to announce that Michael has made the electronic version of his book, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity, available for download at no cost to our readers. Simply click on the link above to download your copy of this remarkable book on how to better engage employees; igniting their creativity, imagination, and spirits to the success of the organization.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Michael Lee Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out, is co-Founder and President of E Pluribus Partners, a consulting firm specializing in helping leaders create ‘Connection Cultures’ to form strong bonds among the management, employees, and customers of an organization. Michael’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Leader to Leader, Human Resource Executive, and Fox Business Now. He has spoken at conferences organized by The Conference Board, GE, Google, NASA, Johnson & Johnson and Yale-New Haven Hospital. To read Michael’s full biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:35 — 47.5MB)

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Introducing the StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence

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Learn how to increase productivity and profitability through enhanced employee engagement with the StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence. Base on hundreds of years of real-world business experience, our Center of Excellence contains the practical tools and insights today’s leaders need to improve their employees’ engagement; thereby increasing productivity and profitability.

All too often, employees possess tremendous untapped value. Leaders who more fully engaging their employees begin to unleash this value by inspiring those who work for them to apply the full measure of their creative energy and talent to performing work aligned to the achievement of organizational goals. Winning employees’ trust and commitment is no easy task. Leaders seeking the practical tools and insights to better engage employees need to look no further than the StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence now available on StrategyDriven.com.

“The current economic downturn and recent changes in healthcare regulations makes it more important than ever to maximize the value creation of every employee,” explains Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “StrategyDriven experience and research by the Gallup Organization reveal that companies having world-class levels of employee engagement are 18 percent more productive and 12 percent more profitable than those performing in the bottom quartile. In fact, these companies realize 3.9 times the Earnings Per Share growth rate of low performers within their industry.”

The StrategyDriven Employee Engagement Center of Excellence provides the actionable tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their employees’ level of engagement, thereby increasing productivity and profitability. Our many articles and podcasts cover those topics critical to improving employee engagement including: Management and Leadership, Diversity and Inclusion, Organizational Accountability, Decision-Making, and Business Strategy.

StrategyDriven Centers of Excellence provide executives and managers with the multitude of tools, techniques, and insights needed to not only address but to excel at today’s most challenging business issues. Each Center of Excellence contains a collection of real-world tested tools and hard-won leadership insights based on our contributors’ work with dozens of small, mid, and large size companies with both domestic and international operations across many industries. Collectively, these methods represent the hundreds of years of experience of today’s most sought after leaders – our contributors.

StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 31 – How to Better Engage Employees

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 31 – How to Better Engage Employees explores the actions executives and managers can take to better engage their employees; revealing how to improve employee satisfaction, productivity, retention, and ultimately the bottom line. During our discussion, Michael Lee Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity and co-Founder and President of E Pluribus Partners, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the benefits leaders realize as a result of better engaging their employees
  • the most significant driver of employee engagement and why is this factor so important
  • actions executives, managers, and supervisors should take to foster an engaging workplace environment
  • what a Connection Culture is and why it is so powerful at engaging employees
  • how to create a Connection Culture
  • actions executives and managers should take when someone within their organization does not buy-in or embrace the organization’s Connection Culture
  • the impact of ‘hard’ factors, such as HR policies and benefits, on workforce engagement

Additional Information

In addition to the incredible insights Michael shares in Fired Up or Burned Out and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from his websites, www.FiredUpOrBurnedOut.com and www.EPluribusPartners.com. Michael’s Connection Culture Manifesto can be downloaded for free by clicking here. His book, Fired Up or Burned Out, can be purchased by clicking here.

A special gift for StrategyDriven readers…

We are pleased to announce that Michael has made the electronic version of his book, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity, and Productivity, available for download at no cost to our readers. Simply click on the link above to download your copy of this remarkable book on how to better engage employees; igniting their creativity, imagination, and spirits to the success of the organization.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Michael Lee Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out, is co-Founder and President of E Pluribus Partners, a consulting firm specializing in helping leaders create ‘Connection Cultures’ to form strong bonds among the management, employees, and customers of an organization. Michael’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Leader to Leader, Human Resource Executive, and Fox Business Now. He has spoken at conferences organized by The Conference Board, GE, Google, NASA, Johnson & Johnson and Yale-New Haven Hospital. To read Michael’s full biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:33 — 51.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS