By Daniel Bobinski
Beliefs and attitudes about the workplace have definitely changed over the years, and the people of today’s workforce look at labor and lifestyles much differently than the workforce of 30 years ago.
This became the topic of conversation during a recent phone call with an old colleague. This gentleman recently became a senior manager at a large company (you would know the company if I named it), and he told me that two of his main concerns are attracting good employees who are just entering the workforce and keeping the good ones he already has.
“The workplace has changed since you and I first started out,” he told me. “There’s a different work ethic these days.” I agreed. And, I thought if he wanted to create methods by which he could both attract and keep good employees, it was probably best if we started by identifying what contributed to an employee’s sense of engagement.
After some discussion, we settled on three main components.
- Employee commitment to the organization’s vision and mission
- Employee motivation and enthusiasm – one’s personal reasons for engaging with a unique job description
- Employee esprit de corps – the sense of camaraderie and unity that exists on a team
First up was having employees be committed to a vision and mission statement. It should go without saying, but if your organization doesn’t have those, then creating them will be a necessary first step. I’ve written in this space before about vision and mission statements, so if those are lacking where you work, let me encourage you to visit https://dd0e7f6606.nxcli.io/ and search for vision and mission to get my take on those.
But assuming you already have them, a fundamental action for getting people committed to those statements is to talk about them regularly. That means you yourself need to know them. It’s sad, but if I walk into any company and ask five people to tell me their organization’s vision and mission statements, I’m likely to get a blank look, a laugh, an “I don’t know,” or five completely different answers.
Bottom line here, if employee engagement is the goal, then employees need to know what they’re engaging. We should regularly talk about our company’s vision and mission to employees and help them understand how their work contributes to achieving those goals.
Engaging with a Job Description
Next up is strengthening your employee’s motivation and enthusiasm. You’ve probably heard me say it before, but what slows people down is not a lack of motivation, but the presence of obstacles. That’s because the word “motivation” means “a reason to move,” and everyone already has a reason to move. What slows people down are obstacles. If we get rid of a person’s obstacles, each person’s own reason(s) to move will propel them forward.
The key here is to help each individual see how their personal reasons to move will result in fulfillment and the sense of a job well done when it comes to accomplishing the tasks required for a specific job. Know that telepathy doesn’t work here. Because we can’t read people’s minds, we need to interact with individual employees to learn more of who they are and what makes them tick.
One way to do this is to converse with people about their interests, attitudes and values. What do they like? Why? What interests them? What are their dreams and goals? It’s been said that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you show genuine interest in people, they will know you care.
Notice the word “genuine.” This is one of the traits of a good manager. People are the focus here, not machines or systems, so if we want the people on our teams to engage, we first need to get to know the people working on our teams.
Then, as you get to know your team members, take some one-on-one time to privately review each person’s job description with that person. Again, if you don’t have job descriptions, then creating those will be a prerequisite to this, but once you know what drives a person, find ways to connect their natural motivators to the requirements of the job.
You can even go beyond a person’s current job and show how their interests, attitudes and values connect to future opportunities within the company. Look for ways to connect company values with an individual’s values. I’m not saying invent things. Definitely be intellectually honest. It’s just that often times people aren’t shown how their personal values correlate to a company’s values. Identifying the similarities goes a long way to engaging and retaining good people.
Time is required
You might be saying, “Wait, this takes a lot of time.” Absolutely it does. You won’t see it in many managerial job descriptions, but it’s part of a manager’s duty to learn the strengths, weaknesses and motivations of each person on a team. It’s still work. It’s just a different kind of work from what we think of as work.
Esprit de Corps
Lastly, let’s touch on building a sense of camaraderie and unity on a team. Much could be addressed here, but two actions that stand out as essential are ensuring everyone understands the purpose of the team and also encouraging open communication among team members.
With regard to purpose, it’s easy to say, “Didn’t I cover that when I ensured each person understood the vision and mission and when I connected their natural motivations to their job descriptions?” The answer is both “yes,” and “no.” Those are individual efforts. Building esprit de corps means helping everyone on the team realize that everyone else on the team is also intimately aware of the team’s purpose and goals. It’s like designing an open book. It’s creating an open and ongoing dialog among team members.
Building esprit de corps also involves creating, projecting, encouraging and rewarding a can-do attitude. On teams where people are free to encourage and free to offer and receive feedback, esprit de corps is more easily established.
Like I told my friend, work on these things and you are more likely to attract and retain quality employees, no matter what their generation.
Daniel Bobinski, who has a doctorate in theology, is a best-selling author and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. For more than 30 years he’s been working with teams and individuals (1:1 coaching) to help them achieve excellence.
