Gallup has a book coming out in May that discusses the most significant factor in an organization’s long-term success. What is it? It’s the manager, and the “research is based on the largest global study of the future of work.”
As the head of Human Resources for our company, I have a vision for our employees. It comes down to five words. We want to be: person-centric, performance-minded, strengths-based, engagement-focused, and self-aware.
I’m on a kick to read books on employee engagement. My reading list for the New Year is full of them. As the head of our company’s human resources function, my role is help drive employee engagement. The reason is simple—when employees are engaged, everyone wins.
The business benefits of employee recognition are numerous. Studies published by Forbes and GetHppy show that employee recognition improves engagement, customer satisfaction, employee retention, employee experience, and performance.
Last time we talked about the benefits of creating a role and outcome statement for employees. Now let's talk about how to do it. Only 60% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work, which leaves 40% guessing and the engagement level plummeting.
As I shared in "Giving Employees A Home," only “6 in 10 U.S. employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work,” which drives disengagement in the American workforce (Gallup). Since clear expectations are critical for employees, our company has established a unique role and outcome statement for each position. Everyone from the CEO to the newest employee can access each other’s role and outcome statements.
There’s always a war going on between our weaknesses and strengths. If you’re a business owner, there’s also a war between working IN your business and working ON your business.
If you want to build a strengths-based culture in your organization, it won’t happen overnight. Sure, you may want your coworkers to take hold of strengths instantly to receive the tremendous benefits of focusing on strengths like: increased productivity, retention, job satisfaction, positive interactions with coworkers, and so forth.
Job descriptions aren't designed for you. Have you ever thought about that? They're designed in a generic manner to attract a diverse pool of candidates. If companies made the list of requirements and job tasks too specific, they may not get any candidates at all. It's a really smart strategy...until the candidate starts the job.
We’ve all been there. You sit down to work on a project and your mind is thinking about a number of other things. It may be upcoming meetings, a difficult discussion you just had, or what you’ll be doing this weekend.