Gearing up non-engaged and highly disengaged employees
Have you ever sailed a boat with your two lazy friends? If yes, you would definitely know the pain of rowing the boat alone to the shore. Now, an actively engaged employee would be the one full of passion and leadership qualities, driven to row the boat to the shore; highly disengaged employee would be the one sitting in the boat with his feet relaxing in the air and least interested where you would land up; the third would be the non-engaged employee who is rowing the boat with you but at a negligible speed…
Hmmm… So how to get to the shore at your speed? Applying all your energy by taking a corrective action or not caring about those disengaged employees. The former would definitely be the choice of a true leader! You need to motivate your employees and at the end, if they don’t turn around as actively engaged employees then just letting them go!
How to handle non-engaged employees
According to Gallup there are 56% non-engaged employees. They are hard to spot because they put in the hours but not energy. You can tackle them with following activities-
Non-engaged employees put in the hours but not energy
Connect from top to bottom: Non-engaged employees need to be engaged in-person by their managers. So, you need to first engage the managers. Try talk to your leadership team every week. Fill them with enthusiasm so that the same enthusiasm seeps like water to the bottom layer. Make them aware of the facts about non-engaged employees and how to fix it. If you do that, half of the work has been accomplished.
Controlling turns them off: Due to lack of freedom at work, employees tend to loose confidence while not realizing when they turn into a robot aka non-engaged employees. Let them take their decisions for the organization, discuss the pros & cons for it and implement. Set OKRs for them to keep a track record. You may learn the efficient way to define OKRs here.
Collect regular feedback: Collecting their feedback would actually make them aware of the fact that things need to be fixed. Try using tools which can track their progress without making them feel that you are micro-managing such as, FeedbackSocially, Small-improvements etc.
For highly disengaged employees
These are the ones who would never stick with you because they don’t see their benefit. Let’s see how you can make them stick-
Try getting into the roots of the problem: Yup! I know that will take hell lot of energy but getting to the root will actually turn up to be really exciting. Enhance their skills while providing them trainings; this will allow them to know their core areas and build trust for the organization. Once they see the efforts put in by the organization they might eventually turn into engaged employees.
Show them the bigger picture: Give them a clear vision of your organization’s goals and how they stand to gain if they are achieved. This would bring transparency in the organization and will help them evaluate their goals according to the organization’s or you may do the opposite as described in the following point.
Try aligning your goals with theirs: Connect to them in-person and tell them to write their goals. Try aligning organization’s goals with theirs. Just give a try! I know that’s difficult but I assure you that the end result would be exceptionally good and you would end up turning those highly disengaged employees into engaged ones.
This is not just all! You need to be on your toes and keep on engaging employees each day. Keep in mind, the actively engaged employees shouldn't turn into non-engaged ones as that would definitely be a nightmare!
Are you still not sure what should be the next step?
Next Blog-The most important questions you need to ask in your next survey to differentiate between non-engaged and highly disengaged employees.
