Creating a great working environment and culture involves maintaining employee or team engagement and connection.
Companies now should focus on creating a culture of engagement. What does this mean? It’s looking at what will make employees thrive in an organization. It’s putting people first and thinking about how we maximize the strengths of the employees.
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- How do we focus on their careers?
- How do we create loyalty to the people who work with us?
- How do we care for them?
- How do we make sure that they feel that work extends themselves?
- Do we make sure that we listen to their needs all the time?
When you’re able to create a culture of engagement, you can create a place where employees can thrive.
What does it mean? In terms of business results, this means that people will go the extra mile. They’re able to find solutions, give quicker turnaround times, and collaborate with one another.
People will be excited to go to work and give their full commitment. They will work hard, not just for the sake of working hard, but because they care about the company and the organization that they work for.
“In an environment subjected to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, a culture of engagement in the workplace can help everyone in the organization understand and recognize change management.”
What is Change Management?
Change management denotes that the organization is transforming. It could also show that the business’s situation or direction is changing. Change management is a process. And, because you have people working behind the scenes, you ensure you know where they are and that you can meet their needs.
One important thing you must do as a leader is being able to communicate your vision and ensure that others understand it. So you must be able to drill it down in meetings, ensure that everyone can communicate that vision, ask questions, ask them if they have any challenges, and encourage people to speak up.
So you get to hear what they have to say because you want them to be a part of your vision and direction. You must also understand your people’s feelings about the change because there are people who will go with it, resist it, and do not want to be a part of it.
So, as a leader, you want to know where your people are in the change process and how you can help them align with where you want to go.
Another factor to consider is the organization’s structure.
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- Is it in favor of the change? Do you have the right people on your team?
- Can the people you put in new positions play to their strengths?
- Is this something they want to do? Is this in line with their mission?
What you want to accomplish with this change is to have employees who enjoy what they do and can contribute to the organization. You don’t want people who are unhappy in their current location to leave or have poor performance.
“You recognize that change is a process that occurs over time throughout the entire change process. As a result, you must develop structures and programs to assist your employees in adapting to the changes. You want to provide them with tools that will help them perform better in their roles.” – Coach Anda.
When people are more engaged at work, they feel psychologically safe. They can contribute and share their problems and where they are, and everyone can help.
When everyone feels engaged and connected, they feel the organization’s support. When so many changes happen, work is a significant part of who you are, and you spend a lot of time there. So, there must be a solid support system.
It becomes a question of how leaders can create a strong support system for their team to make them feel that the organization is helping them manage and address the change.
As a leader, you want to find out what the gaps are to address what they need. That’s what change management is. It’s about the leader. It’s leader-driven and leader-initiated, but everyone must be part of the process. They have to want to be there, commit to the changes, and know what it takes to get to where they are, to where they want to go.
What are the benefits of engaged employees to work and business performance?
We can link results in business to how engaged employees are. Gallup has an entire process, a microeconomics path, that shows a direct link between having engaged employees and a rise in stock.
The first step is to find the best people for the jobs. Once you’ve found the right people for the job and the company, you need to give them brilliant managers to lead them.
Great managers are leaders who can look at their employees’ strengths and needs and help them grow within the company.
And when they can do that, you know they are engaged, love what they do, and can help the company. And because of that, you have engaged employees who can take care of internal and external customers, which leads to engaged customers.
Then it leads to steady growth, which leads to a rise in profits and then a stock increase. So it has a direct link to what’s going on outside of the business and inside.
So engagement is needed because it’s what will get people to do their best. It is what will bring out the best in them. It’s what will make people care about and work for the organization. Company leaders need to consider ways to keep their workers interested.
How can leaders help employees be more engaged?
It’s essential to have people be engaged. Part of engagement is having people able to communicate what their problems and challenges are and feel psychologically safe.
People can address their problems when they feel connected to their boss and the organization and can speak up and share their opinions without being judged.
#1. Create a coaching culture.
Make time for conversations with your team. Conduct group meetings with them, checking their well-being, looking at how to grow their careers, addressing their problems, and listening to their needs.
#2. Conduct a dipstick survey.
It’s also essential for leaders to find out where employees are from time to time, especially with their team, because the environment changes. The engagement level also of the employees can also change. So it’s essential always to do a dipstick, and HR can support these programs by creating a culture where people come in first.
#3. Create well-being programs for the employees.
HR can run surveys to find out what the company’s employees need. They can even do little things like if people prefer not to spend too much late night in the evenings, a leader can also make sure that work ends at six and there’s no weekend work.
So it’s creating a culture that has the values that employees also care about as well. There has to be a constant conversation about engagement to see if the team members are engaged with a company or not.
What steps have you taken to improve engagement with your team? Are they with you in dealing with change?