People never care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
John Maxwell
The term employee engagement has been a buzzword for a while. But its meaning is often misunderstood.
Employee engagement is the extent of passion individuals on your team bring to their job. That commitment is what leads to productivity and the performance results you are looking for.
When employees are not passionate about their job, they typically perform at the work to rule level. That means, they do just enough to complete the task and no discretionary effort is in play. Measuring the discretionary effort is impossible, but it affects the bottom line.
Assess your team’s engagement:
- Is your team highly motivated to contribute to the success of your department?
- Do your people consistently look for more effective ways to get the job done?
- Does your team get a strong sense of personal accomplishment from their work?
- Is there an understanding of how they help your department meet its goals?
- Do your people always have a positive attitude?
- Do you recognize employee contributions?
By answering these questions, you’ll be able to assess the level of commitment of your team. If you’ve answered “no” to many of the above questions, your people are probably doing the minimum effort to stay employed. There’s a lack of discretionary effort to increase their productivity and their performance, while satisfactory, isn’t at the highest level to achieve real growth.
Increase employee engagement:
- Remember the law of the niche. Properly placed employees leverage their talents and strengths.
- Develop a culture that is strengths-based. That means creating an environment where your team can quickly learn their roles so they may increase production.
- Showing some flexibility and understanding goes a long way in creating increased employee engagement.
Without your employee’s discretionary effort, organizational work could come to a grinding halt. There’s no way to account for the infinite amount of discretionary effort anyone brings to their job, but it shows up on the bottom line and it shows up in your organization’s culture.
Through administering The Maxwell DISC Assessment in your department, you can accurately position your team to bring out their strengths, thereby increasing employee engagement.
By knowing your team better, you’re leading them to achieve your organization’s vision while contributing to bringing out the best of each individual on the team.
To learn more about The Maxwell DISC Personality Indicator Report contact me at genesis@genesiseakesinternational.com
