How Behaviour drives Employee Engagement

It is not uncommon in today’s business culture, to find organizations where someone is in charge of engagement as though you could assign it or delegate it. A culture of engagement is nothing more than the total sum of each individual employee. Employees, who are encouraged, encourage others more often. When it has a deliberate and recognized application at the top of corporate hierarchy, it is exponential as it flows to the front line. Therefore, if it doesn’t occur at the top, it limits what will occur in the rest of the organization. All leaders want an engaged workforce, and many leaders think they have one, when actually they don’t.

Today’s leaders must engage with their employees in all sorts of ways:
• Communicate effectively and regularly
• Share appropriate information
• Solicit feedback
• Reward and recognize good work
• Respond to personal and professional needs
• Provide timely and adequate resources and guidance
• Invite them into decision making, problem solving, and the brainstorming process
All of these tactics have a behavior component to them and require a behavior awareness of the individual leader for their employees.

What type of workforce do you want to create? Your behavior makes the difference. As leaders we make a purposeful decision to engage our employees. Although engagement is a personal matter, leaders must acquire and practice daily the mind set and behavior skills of Positive Presence to create a culture that promotes a sense of personal ownership, accountability, and responsibility among their team members.

All leaders we must realize that for people to truly follow your lead, they first must believe that you, as their leader, have their best interests at heart. This belief is grounded in a positive emotional connection between the leader and the followers. This connection is created in the daily experience of the leader’s behavior and mind set. This connection is sustained in the consistent daily experience of matching the leader’s words to the leader’s behavior. It is in this positive connection that engaged employees have a sense of ownership and personal connection to their work that results in higher levels of productivity and organizational performance.

So how do you know where your employees stand on engagement? Here are five sure-tell ways of knowing.
1. They willingly lend a hand to coworkers, even when they aren’t asked.
2. They aren’t clock watchers; they often show up early or even stay late.
3. They openly offer ideas and solutions for improvements.
4. They acknowledge the accomplishments of others and are pleased with their success.
5. They quickly volunteer to lead or assist in implementing initiatives outside their immediate work area.

While these five indicators are not all inclusive of engagement indicators, they do constitute a quick test for organizations to evaluate their efforts to create an engaged workforce. You cannot change what you do not measure and you cannot measure what you do not know. It is important that you evaluate your organization for engagement and create a systematic, programmatic methodology to develop it and sustain it.