Employee Engagement is a Habit (Well Two Habits Actually)

Encouraging and sustaining high levels of employee engagement means that you’re going to have to create many new habits for yourself. The first is going to be that you make a habit of booking appointments with yourself to do the required work. Your new title is “Employee Engagement Evangelist”and you can’t possibly fulfill that role effectively by doing a few odd jobs in your spare time.

In whatever calendar system you’re using, book a block of time, preferably the same time, every day to do the work of Employee Engagement Evangelist. Make a promise to yourself to keep those appointments and to make sure you do, tell everyone else that you have made this promise. They’ll help keep you honest.

Now what do you do in those blocked off times? This is the time that you use to create your Employee Engagement and Retention Plan, create, implement and evaluate the employee surveys, hold meetings to discuss strategies for reward programs, training and development programs, revise the new employee orientation program, etc. To be truly effective, these all take TIME.

Here’s the second habit you need. Always do two Employee Engagement Activities every day aside from those you’ve blocked time to work on. Ideally we’d like five to seven but we start with just two and here’s why. Ask any personal fitness trainer and they’ll tell you that one of the guaranteed ways to fall of your “fitness wagon” is to take on too much at the beginning. We get all fired up on New Year’s Day or our Birthday and plan this ambitious workout schedule of different exercises and dietary regimes and a few weeks later (if we’ve even lasted that long) we give up on the whole idea as being too hard and quietly reach for the TV remote.

If you want to get into the habit of exercising for 1 hour every day – you have to begin by getting into the habit of exercising for 15 minutes a day. You’ll still see results and those results will motivate and enable you to accomplish more.

That’s what we’re doing when we start by tackling only two Employee Engagement Activities each day. You’ll still see results now and can work up to the rest gradually. And the first two can be very simple:

• Ask two employees to tell you how their day is going? This informal chat is a really great way to start getting a picture of what your people are thinking, feeling, and being frustrated by. Find out what you can do to help, then do it.
• Recognize two employees for a job well done. Maybe one publicly and one privately. These don’t need to be grand events and banquets, but they do have to be a grateful and sincere acknowledgment. Insincerity is spotted a mile away.
• Or start by just consciously making a point of smiling and greeting two people in the morning. If you don’t already do this, you’ll be amazed at the immediate results and best of all, a smile fits into every budget. Try to meet two different people each day.

Remember, it takes 30 days to form a pattern but it takes 90 days to form a habit.

Kathy Legg, President and Senior Employee Engagement Evangelist
LittleBrownMouse, Inc
Toll Free:1-866-229-4621
Direct: 1-403-613-4621
http://www.LittleBrownMouse.ca