Maximize Employee Engagement Beyond 70%?
Today’s business mantra: Do more with less.
Doesn’t sound too motivating does it? Your company expects more but you have less to work with. Less money, less resources, less benefits, less support, less infrastructure, less people and on and on. But by all means, do more!
It seems the bar keeps raising and employees have less ability to reach it. Or do they?
What if…the “more” that is required is already there and just needs to be tapped into. What could your organization do with another, say 30% effort (and productivity) by every employee?
According to Impact Achievement Group research, “The average American employee feels that the effort a person has to give in order to keep his or her paycheck is about 70% of what they feel they could be giving.”
Wow, that’s quite a deficit between the potential and the actual effort from the average employee. This is called “discretionary effort” and best defined as the difference between the effort an employee is capable of bringing to a job or task and the effort actually required to just get by.
Consistent research indicates that 72% of employees admit they aren’t giving their best effort. And that’s just the honest ones!
There’s a real and pervasive disconnect between what employees are capable of and what many actually do. One can only imagine the negative impact on bottom line performance and employee fulfillment – which happen to be two important indicators of a healthy culture.
So in an attempt to reduce this “discretionary effort” of employees, organizations respond with various programs and training designed to motivate greater effort from employees. While these types of initiatives are admirable, they will never have the desired impact if they are ad hoc, inconsistent or not integrated into an overall enterprise-wide strategy.
When it comes to achieving employee engagement at closer to 100%, it can only happen if there is a commitment to a culture that supports certain ideals (or what I call Culturetopia values), such as:
– Excellence as a standard
– Managers exists to support employees
– Everyone is a leader (a person of influence)
– Everyone has a clear sense of direction and purpose
– Customers are priority one
While these ideals are not comprehensive, they will serve as a firm foundation of achieving what we all face, whether we like it or not – doing more with less. Perhaps even 30% more?
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About Jason Young. Author, speaker and consultant. Jason Young has been called a “rare breed” when it comes to developing leaders, teams and customer service initiatives. As a former senior-level manager at Southwest Airlines, Jason learned the value of a successful workplace culture. During his 10-years with the airline consistently rated No. 1 in customer service and employee satisfaction, he was a key driver in creating and developing the company’s innovative training programs for its successful leadership and customer service culture that have become renowned in the business world. Today, Jason shares his vision in developing successful corporate cultures and workplace environments with forward-thinking companies, including Starbucks, Coca Cola, Radio Shack and Tyson Foods, to name a few. He has even captured his philosophy of creating high performance cultures in his new book, The Culturetopia Effect. Find out more at www.culturetopia.com