Employee Engagement Series | installment 1: Discovery
In our first installment of our Employee Engagement series, we’re breaking down our first focus, “discovery”.
Before we dive into the focus of the month, from all of us at brand28, thank you!
We cannot believe the overwhelming feedback we’ve received on this employee engagement calendar. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, CLICK HERE.
Employee engagement is clearly a challenge we’re all trying to solve – how to form a connection with our employees so that they stick around and invest in the company’s mission.
Now, the reason we created this calendar a few years back is because our founder, Monirah Bacnik, would regularly do talks about employee engagement. We studied the thought leaders in this space and did a tremendous amount of research However, the question that always left us wanting more was – what the heck is employee engagement anyways? There are a lot of different definitions out there that is sure to send you into a spiral and you can end up easily overwhelmed and not knowing what step to take next.
At brand28, we define employee engagement as a state of mind, emotions and behaviors shared between the company and the employee.
But there’s an easier word for this. It’s called a relationship. Yup, employee engagement is simply a relationship. You can’t solve employee engagement challenges in a day, a week or a month. It’s not one thing you do and then poof! Your employees are engaged. No. It’s an ongoing nurturing exercise. It’s never ending. And you need to practice the four crucial ingredients all year round in order to successfully engage your team.
Just think about a married couple. When they get married and tell each other on their wedding day that they love each other, do you think it stops there? No way! You’re always trying to show love, appreciation and respect. And both parties are actively doing that to have a successful relationship. The same thing goes with employers and employees. It’s a two-way street. If you go into the employee engagement puzzle, flip your perspective and treat it like a relationship – you will see enormous change when it comes to how you act, react and the response you get from employees.
There’s obviously a lot to talk about on this topic – way more than we can squeeze into a calendar.
But, since this calendar received the largest number of downloads ever, we want to dive into the focus of every month with you!
Our first installment is all about discovery. Discovering your people. What they like. What makes them tick. How they prefer to be communicated with.
In order to provide your people with what they need and want, you have to first understand who they are.
Scroll down to dive into this month’s focus - “DISCOVERY"
DISCOVERY | learn & explore the needs and wants of your people
As it appears in our Employee Engagement Calendar. Click here to download and follow along.
It’s January! This month’s focus is “discovery”. This month we want you to just discover what’s going on with your employees. Just sit back and listen to your team and what they’re trying to tell you.
Why is listening important?
Listening is one of the most effective skills we can learn in our lifetime. It allows us to understand the person on the other end and meet them where they are. Listening allows us to learn and broaden our knowledge.
Listening tells the person on the other end that you are open to communicating, you are open to hearing their point of view and you are interested in what they have to say.
When the person(s) you’re talking to realize your willingness to listen and learn, barriers are broken and it opens up not only a line of communication, but a different type of relationship that is ready for growth.
When we think about relationships, whether with our spouse or with our friends, it’s so important to listen to the other person to understand their needs and wants. So, that’s we want you to do with this relationship – the employer to employee relationship. We want you to listen to discover what the needs are of your team.
Now, in order to listen, we need to get our employees to talk. We recommend these steps:
1. Determine what you want to learn. Do you want to learn about how they want to be communicated with? Do you want to learn about their mental health and how they’re handling the pandemic? Or, maybe you want to learn about how they perceive the current culture, and whether or not they like where they work. Write down exactly what you want to learn to form a specific direction.
2. Form your questions. We like to encourage our clients to ask open ended questions that welcome employees’ thoughts and ideas. For example…
How do you like to be communicated with when it comes to important company messages?
How can we communicate with you better?
What ideas do you have in improving mental wellness at our organization?
How do you feel about our company culture?
How do you feel about your growth opportunities with us?
What is our company’s mission?
Yes, we understand that asking questions in this manner may be more time consuming and it doesn’t allow you to group answers in a box. But that’s okay. You want to get people talking so you can hear things that you wouldn’t normally hear if you were to send out a survey with yes or no options, or a grading scale. Remember, this is your time to listen, and you’ll be surprised what you may find out.
3. Ask your questions.
What is the best way to go about asking these questions? There are a few different strategies you can try depending on the structure of your organization, and of course, your workload.
Surveys. You can absolutely put together a survey. However, be sure to leave plenty of room for text. And also, be sure you give yourself time to read through all of the answers. When you send out your survey, be sure to provide context on why you’re asking these questions. What is this for? What’s your end goal? Is it to improve the company culture? Then say that. “We are asking you a series of questions because we want to learn all that we can, and hope to turn what we learn into a better work experience for you.” Or, “This year we are focused on our team’s mental health and wellbeing. In order to provide the best resources for you, we are asking you some anonymous questions to better understand how you’re handling the current environment we are living in.”
Focus groups. This is one of our favorite ways to get real feedback from employees. Find your superstar employees and empower them to lead each focus group. Each group can have its own focus – communication, company culture, growth opportunities, etc. Then, have each focus group leader hold a group collaboration to talk through ideas, concerns, challenges, issues, and then that leader reports back to you their findings. This allows the employees to open up more since they’re not sitting in front of a manager. It saves you time, and it gives these focus group leaders a real purpose in the organization.
Little talks. Whether you’re in a virtual environment right now or back in the office, take the effort to schedule virtual “talks” or watercooler chats. For the former, send an employee a coffee to their home and sip and chat via a virtual meeting. For the latter, chatting by the watercooler is fine. But, if you really want your employees to open up about things that are really happening around the workplace, maybe set up a space in a conference room, a closed-door office or even a local smoothie shop.
Anonymous options. For ongoing feedback from employees, promote anonymous opportunities for employees to share their feelings and / or questions. Many tech platforms have the option of sending out a “sheet” and allowing employees to fill it in anonymously, such as Smartsheet and Google Forms (which is free).
Now, it’s time to think like a marketer!
Learning about our employees relates a lot to marketing and how they learn about their customers. It’s so important to learn about who we’re trying to engage because it allows us to form better, deeper connections. In the employee engagement calendar we talk about building ‘employee personas’. Marketers use ‘buyer personas’ to identify and effectively communicate to their target market. You can apply this same concept to your employee population to help you understand who your employees are.
Final thoughts…
There are various ways to discover what your employees are wanting or needing. Just ask. That’s all you have to focus on for this month. Based on what you learn, you’ll be able to formulate real goals and potentially see situations that you never knew existed.
Listen to discover.
Thank you for joining us this month for the Employee Engagement Series’ first installment! Join us next month as we dive into February’s focus - “Show the Love”. See you then!