Employee engagement is a much talked about topic, and despite all the chatter it continues to be a challenge because all too often senior leaders don’t understand the impacts that increased engagement can have to the organizations. I agree with what Six Seconds says which is that senior leaders continue to make three tragic mistakes:
1. This as a “nice to have” instead of confronting reality:
Employee engagement is the lifeblood of performance.
2. We can increase engagement just by talking about it:
Employees become engaged due to their emotional experience.
3. Surface “fluff” like perks will increase engagement:
The opposite is true; it’s fundamentally about emotionally intelligent leadership.
But employee engagement is more than just about emotions, it’s environmental (or functional) too. That is, while there are emotional drivers to employee engagement, there are functional drivers too.
One of the many challenges for the HR organization is to prove bottom-line impacts of employee engagement. It’s hard to put a number on emotion. This infographic from BI Worldwide demonstrates the emotional and functional way to increase engagement to achieve extraordinary effort and positive financial results.
