The challenge of employee engagement and keeping people motivated
Arguably the No.1 management skill is to be able to engage, motivate and inspire people at work. Achieve that small matter and both great performance and outstanding results are inevitable; fail in this area and you will notice how quickly talent and knowledge leave the organisation. So how can managers develop this essential skill?
The focus for those who want to become more powerful in this area is to recognise the need that people have to do work that they care about. This isn’t flaky. There is money to be made in emotion. Indeed, it can be said with complete confidence, that emotion underpins commercial transactions everywhere. Managers want enthusiastic staff, businesses want emotionally satisfied consumers, team leaders want energised and energising colleagues.
But how many managers know whether their direct reports derive any sort of satisfaction or pleasure from their work? And if they knew that most employees feel capable of improving their performance by at least 30 percent, would that give them enough of an incentive to find out?
The proposition is compelling. People who deliver the best results are typically inspired by what they are doing. Their work has meaning for them; in contrast to this, those who are denied the opportunity to contribute through their work will soon look elsewhere for ways in which they can make their mark. Given this equation, there is then a powerful case to be made for managers to explore with their people not only what it is that gives them a sense of meaning, but to help them in taking actions which are congruent with their sense of purpose.
But is there enough meaningful and inspiring work to go around? The answer to this is yes; meaning and inspiration is available to people in all sorts of everyday ways. Some will get it from the service they provide to the public, others from the way they work together with their colleagues, and many will derive huge pleasure and satisfaction from the detail of what they are doing and what interests them. In this respect, meaning and personal motivation come from what the individual is investing in.
The challenge that this leaves for managers is therefore to help their people make it really clear what engages them - and then to help them act and behave in accordance with their own values, beliefs and goals. This may require a quite different sort of conversation between managers and their direct reports, but it is a conversation guaranteed to fire people up.
Our range of motivation programmes all share one common objective; to improve your performance at work. Find outm more about our ‘Motivate’ courses, workshops and diagnostic tools at www.illumine.co.uk/motivate