Rule #1 - Employee Engagement is NOT an Initiative
“Brands are destroyed every day, in every interaction, with every customer. A company’s ability to deliver the desired customer experience depends on those at the delivery point both understanding it and feeling compelled to support it. This is a challenge that all company’s face.”
Rule #1 – Employee Engagement is NOT an initiative – it is a way of life.
It is unfortunate, but so many organizations still feel the same way as Henry Ford did. They talk about employees as valuable assets, but really they view them as a nuisance, something that constantly threatens the experience that they deliver to their valued customers, every day in every interaction. It is these same organizations that talk about employee engagement and set up an initiative or a program or launch a survey all aimed at improving the level of employee engagement and commitment to the firm. They then pat themselves on the back and announce in their annual report that they are focused on engaging their employees.
Having said that, the best realize that employee engagement as a short-term initiative or program (even with unlimited resources) will NEVER succeed. Rather, employee engagement must be seen as much more than an initiative – it must be the course of conduct, the way of life. Why? Did you know? “More than 70% of all projects, including strategic initiatives, are canceled or have major problems before completion.”An organization will not be able to create truly engaged and committed employees, if all they do is strike an initiative, deploy an employee survey or just “talk the talk”.
For employee engagement to succeed, I mean to really take root it needs to become part of the culture – “the way things are done around here”. It needs to become a way of life!