8 tips for improving employee (or customer) engagement
Do you feel your success is dependent on trying to get other people to do things? Maybe you’re a Manager trying to get your ‘employees’ to do something. Or a Business Leader trying to get their customers to spend their time or money on something. Or someone with an idea that you want others to believe in as much as you do.
- You can’t make people engaged
Engagement is an outcome. People choose to become engaged if they have sufficient opportunity and motivation. Having said that, there are things you can do to help. You can create the conditions so that people to do things because they want to, rather than because they were told to. The following tips offer some ideas for how to create these conditions.
2. Help people buy into your vision
Inspire people. Think about it, how many boring people are you inspired by? Be interesting. Get people excited. If they buy into your vision, they are more likely to become motivated and keen to participate.
3. Understand what people are motivated by
Do you know what people are motivated by? Put yourself in other people’s shoes and consider what would be in it for them to participate. Would this be enough for them to become motivated? Different people are motivated by different things, such as: opportunities to work on things they’re interested in, recognition from their peers and people they look up to and respect, a salary rise, bonus, and so on. So consider financial and non-financial incentives (check out Dan Pink’s talk on Drive if you’re interested in finding out more about this). Finding out what people are motivated may involve listening online and offline. One-to-one conversations might help uncover things beneath the surface.
4. Be open: provide the tools and opportunity
Encourage people to offer input to areas they think they could improve. Imagine how frustrating it could be if you hire someone because you value their experience, skills and potential, and then confine their contribution to a defined job role. If someone in Sales could add value to Research & Development, couldn’t the benefit of contributing outside their role be greater (to the organisation and individual) than the drawbacks?
5. Give people autonomy
Help people understand the goal you’re working towards, and inspire them about why that’s the goal. Then give them the trust and ownership to determine how they can help you achieve it. You can offer support and advice, and the opportunity to demonstrate their talent and value they can offer.
6. Don’t push too much
If people don’t seem engaged, don’t just push harder by chasing them, as this could aggravate them and push them further away. Rather than viewing them as having bad time management or not caring, consider whether you’re offering something that is attractive enough for them to want to participate in. If you think people ‘must’ do something, challenge yourself on whether the benefits of your request outweigh the cost of another request someone receives on top of everything else they’re currently working on. Making something mandatory may mean participation rises, but what will the effect on employee engagement be? My approach is to design something I believe people will want to pull on, and then let them know it’s available for them to get involved if they want to (rather than me telling them to participate). If they don’t, then I look at refining what I’m offering.
7. Be aware of subtleties of language
Consider the unintended effects of your language on people. For example, would it be better to call people “people” rather than”employees” or “resources”? When you say you “want people to feel involved”, do you actually mean you “want to be involved”? Nuances this could help people relate to you as a person, rather than as a Manager or colleague.
8. Lead by example
How would you feel if someone asked you to do something, but then didn’t do it themselves? If you understood why and are happy with that, then all is well. But if that trust and understanding isn’t there, you may think “well if you’re not doing it, why should I bother?”. So when you ask someone to do something, either lead by example, or be sure they understand why you’re not doing it too.
What would your tip be?
My previous posts:
A suggestion for how to design a responsive Professional Services team
My suggestion for how we spend our once-a-year global in-person team meeting
Why I started #SpotlightSnippets
Why I don’t tell people to come with solutions rather than just problems
Why I don’t tell people to close their laptops in meetings
7 tips for improving your communication style on internal (enterprise) social networks
