Engage & Grow: Growing your business through employee engagement

Our Guest Blogger this month is from John Davison from ActionCOACH Yorkshire. In this blog, John gives us some pointers on Employee Engagement to help you develop your teams to help you grow your business.

Why Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is best described as an approach that creates the right conditions for every member of an organisation to deliver their best each day, acting by their values and committed to their results. They are highly motivated to contribute to organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their own contribution and well-being.

Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, two-way commitment and communication between an organisation and its members. It is an approach that increases the chances of business success, contributing to organisational and individual performance, productivity and well-being. It can be measured. It varies from poor to great. It can be nurtured and dramatically increased; it can be lost and most certainly thrown away.

As employees, what is engagement for you and me?

Employee engagement is getting up in the morning thinking, “Great, going to work. I know what’s on my agenda today. I’ve got some great ideas about how to do it really well. I’m looking forward to connecting with my team and making a difference through my contribution”.

Employee engagement is about understanding our role in the organisation, and being motivated by where it fits in the organisation’s purpose and objectives.

Employee engagement is clearly understanding how the organisation is fulfilling its purpose and objectives, how I can contribute to fulfil those better, and being given a voice to offer ideas and opinions that form part of the decisions made.

Employee engagement is about being a full-time member of the team, focussed on clear goals, trusted and empowered, receiving regular and constructive feedback, supported in developing new skills, thanked and recognised for achievement.

Engaged organisations have strong, human values, with clear evidence of trust and openness based on mutual respect, where promises and commitments – between employers and employees – are understood and fulfilled. We play Win:Win

Employee engagement for you and me as employers?

Employee engagement is about positive mindset and attitude leading to behaviours that serve and improve business outcomes; one always reinforcing the other.

Employee engagement is about our employees feeling pride and loyalty working for our organisation, being a great advocate of the organisation to our clients, users and customers, going the extra mile to finish a piece of work.

Employee engagement is about drawing on our employees’ knowledge and ideas to improve our products and services, and be innovative about how we work.

Employee engagement is about drawing out a deeper commitment from our employees so fewer leave, sick absence reduces, accident rates decline, conflicts and grievances go down, productivity increases.

Employee engagement is about organisation actions that are consistent with the organisation’s values. It is about kept promises, or an explanation why they cannot be kept.

What employee engagement is not!

Employee engagement cannot be achieved by a mechanical, manipulative approach which tries to extract discretionary effort. Employees see through such attempts very quickly and can become cynical and disillusioned.

If you need further information and support on Employee Engagement, we would highly recommend John Davison, Engage & Grow, specialist business coach - ActionCOACH Yorkshire - johndavison@actioncoach.com

John is no stranger to success as a business owner himself following a highly successful career in the Royal Air Force. His highly credited track record resulted in rapid promotion and recognition whilst his business skills grew a small family business through significant market change, generating major sales volumes and much higher net profits.

As a business owner John well understands the pressures and varied challenges facing every business owner. Now, as a business coach, John’s vision is to help others overcome these challenges and reach their full potential, making a huge difference in their business and therefore, their life.

If you would like to guest blog for us or would like to discuss a recruitment and staffing challenge, please contact Keeley Edge on 0844 5044666 or keeley@key-appointments.co.uk

www.key-appointments.co.uk