Do You Know One of the Best Ways to Build Up Employee Engagement and Loyalty Right Now?

Do You Know One of the Best Ways to Build Up Employee Engagement and Loyalty Right Now?

Follow the Money: Many of us found ourselves addicted to new steaming series during the lockdown and beyond. My own guilty pleasure was Money Heist, a Spanish caper series on Netflix. This cult show follows a diverse group of robbers who take on a heist of the Spanish Mint. The show is somewhat like Ocean’s Eleven, only even better. You can use the show to practice your Spanish or view it with subtitles and/or dubbing. Usually, dubbing drives me nuts, but the English-speaking actors on this series are so good, and the show so engrossing, I forgot that’s what was happening.

After they take on the mint, they scatter around the world to avoid various international police groups and live out their fantasies. However, they return to crime in order to rescue one of their own who was nabbed by the cops. The second heist is even more elaborate and outrageous: they decide to rob the gold from the bank of Spain – the equivalent to our Fort Knox!

What I found striking was that they returned because of their captured colleague, not at the behest of their brilliant leader or because they needed the money.

Cohesive Teams Are Engaged Teams: Both soldiers in foxholes and successful sports teams work harder for their cohorts than for their leaders. If you can build up gang loyalty – even during this painful time – you will create more engagement and productivity.

What the Research Reveals: Of course, effective leadership is important, as are skillful direct supervisors. The saying that employees leave supervisors, not organizations, still holds true, but peers have even more impact.

For even more research and case studies on employee engagement and loyalty, go to https://www.workplacesthatwork.com/

What Should You Do?

Don’t Count on Desperation: Yes, of course, many of your workers are now desperate to hold on to their jobs, if they are lucky enough to have one. The question is — are they truly engaged or simply frozen in shock like deer-in-the-headlights mode? You want people who are involved in their work, not just going through the motions. Simply having bodies in place will NOT give you what you need to make things work in this challenging time.

Remove Problem Children: Even if everyone is working remotely, your problem children can still create mischief and worse: online harassment, rude emails and lack of cooperation can sink the best teams. Don’t let things slide if you are aware that someone is a slacker, hacker or harasser. Do your best to coach, warn, place them on a performance improvement plan, or even terminate them if you need to do that. As a wise sage said: It’s not the people you fire who cause you the most problems, it’s the people you don’t fire!”

Don’t Neglect Team-Rebuilding: After the disasters of the last few months, most teams have lost members, their confidence, and good cheer, and perhaps even loved ones. I am generally not a fan of team building events because my experience is that building team loyalty is best accomplished at work — through work. DO pay attention to group cohesion, especially if you are managing remotely. It’s easy to focus on your communications with individuals and their individual results. When you do, you miss the more subtle signs you could have observed with face-to-face interactions that they are not a functioning group. Allow time and space for your workers to speak with you privately and gently probe how well they believe the group is working together.

What Do You Think?

Do people in your organization really know how to listen well? What skills do they use? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com