Engaging for Success

Emer Hinphey writes:

Are you and your employees truly passionate about employee engagement?

Employee engagement should not be a “soft” topic saved only for occasional discussion or attention once a year at our engagement workshop seminar. It’s an essential component for developing an agile business that can survive and thrive in today’s harsh economic climate. The topic of “Employee Engagement” is one we all struggle with.

Ask yourself: How many of your employees are truly passionate about your company, its values, its vision, its mission, and the role that they play within the business? Don’t fool yourself… conduct a harsh analysis and come up with a true number of the passionate employees within your business.

Your answer to this question should be a very telling sign about the overall health of your business. Are people just showing-up and collecting their salary, or are they personally committed to achieving your company vision? Are your employees corporate ambassadors who motivate internal and external stakeholders, or do they gather in small groups to gripe and complain about all the things wrong with the company and its leadership?

The key to having an engaged and inspired workforce is to have a passionate workforce. And the simple truth of the matter is that no single person in the company can instil passion like the person at the top. Despite the general consensus that employee engagement matters, the impact on the company’s bottom line and its capacity for innovation, still appears to be misunderstood by most of us.

There is no doubt it is the MD or CEO who must become the chief engagement ambassador. Being out of touch with the hearts and minds of your employees is never a good position to find yourself in. Feeling the pulse of the business by walking the floor, dropping in on meetings, taking employees at all levels out to lunch, and any number of other initiatives which focus on raising your internal awareness and creating a passionate workforce cannot be underestimated.

It is your passionate employees that are the true talent (regardless of position) that you should be building around. If you can’t get employees to see the light and become passionate about the company and their contribution, then seek to replace them as quickly as possible. Passion is a positive, contagious trait and unfortunately so too are apathy and dissatisfaction.

Passionate employees are productive, energized, committed and loyal assets. Apathetic employees quickly become disenfranchised liabilities that will hurt both productivity and morale. Which would you prefer to recruit; a moderately talented but passionate employee or a very talented but complacent employee?

Truly great companies are built around passionate employees. When you walk into a dynamic, thriving business you can sense the passion. You can feel a certain buzz and hype. On the other hand if you’ve ever walked into a business that feels lifeless, dull and flat, you will know what I’m referring to. In today’s economy, the old saying that “the only thing worse than an employee who quits and leaves is the employee who quits and stays” has never been more accurate.

As a leader you need to understand that your employees not only want to be led, but they want to be led by a passionate leader. Ultimately employees want to be passionate about what they do. Think of the employees that started off with Steve Jobs at Apple or Gates and Allen at Microsoft. It was their passion and commitment that helped change the landscape of their business, not their starting salaries.

To build an extraordinary company, you must light the fire in the bellies of your workforce. You must get them to feel passion about your business and to connect with your vision. You must get your employees to engage. Your ability to transfer your passion to your employees is a very important aspect of being a great leader. Think of any great leader, and while you’ll find varying degrees of skill sets, intellect and ability, I challenge you to name one that did not have passion, as well as the ability to instil passion in their team.