Engaging Employees with Team-Based Goals and Action Plans
Engaging Employees with Team-based Goals
The goal of an employee engagement survey should always be to take meaningful engagement actions from the results. But sometimes “how you get there” may need to shift and adapt to the organization’s current conditions, future needs and appetite. Have you thought about engaging employees with team-based goals?
We know from both experience and research that employee engagement matters to a company’s bottom line. Whereas disengagement fosters lower productivity and higher employee turnover, engagement has the opposite effect. Engaged employees work harder and are more committed to their organization’s strategy and future health.
Savvy companies keep a close eye on how engaged their employees are by monitoring engagement frequently through surveys and other measures of employee satisfaction (retention, discretionary effort, productivity and manager observation).
We also know that far too few companies have learned how to fully implement the actions suggested by their employee engagement survey results…and this despite their commitment to make meaningful changes as a result of the findings. There is a serious lack of follow-up.
Sometimes, however, there is a quasi-legitimate excuse for stalling the follow-up plan—a crisis or major change affecting the organization that necessarily puts everything on hold. It could be a sudden downturn in the economy, an unexpected loss of a key leader, a new competitive offering that makes yours obsolete, or a pending merger.
Is there a way to move forward to engage employees without a huge investment of time and money?
One way to take advantage of the engagement survey results is to funnel the findings back to the relevant leaders and managers thereby engaging employees with team-based goals. Instead of launching company-wide engagement initiatives, the improvements can be handled on a smaller and more localized scale.
Steps for Engaging Employees with Team-based Goals
Here is how this more focused approach to implementing employee engagement survey results can work:
1. Review Engagement By Team
Analyze the results by team and sort engagement data by manager so you have a clear idea of which teams are more engaged (and by how much) than others.
2. Meet with Managers of Low Scoring Teams
Meet with managers of low-scoring teams to report the findings and look at ways to improve employee engagement. There could be multiple reasons for the disengagement from mismanagement (lack of clear expectations, lack of trust, poorly managed performance, poorly assigned roles, lack of accountability, etc.) to systems and procedures that do not support people as a valuable resource.
Work together to design an action plan to address the identified issues and set up a follow-up schedule to check on progress. You may even plan a retake of the survey after six months to check in with the team workers to see that the progress is making a difference to them.
3. Meet with Managers of High Scoring Teams
Meet with managers of how Scoring teams to ask them to identify best practices to engage and retain top talent for your unique culture. Work with them to come up with the critical few factors they consider most important. Share these findings company-wide in a way that makes sense and hold team accountable for taking action.
4. Meet with Managers in the Middle
Meet with the managers who scored in the middle to share best practices with them and pair them up with the high-scoring managers so they can be coached to improve their employees’ engagement.
The Bottom Line
Employee engagement survey results should be shared by managers with their teams. Team members should be encouraged to offer their own ideas for improvement. Teams should be actively involved in the action plans to improve employee engagement and see that meaningful steps are being taken as promised.
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