If you're looking for ways to engage
your employees in the workplace then
today is the day. We're here with Sydney
Jacques. She's definitely the expert in
this arena. Welcome to Hero TV.
Hey everybody its Sydney Jacques and I'm
so excited today to share with you one
of my favorite topics is how to engage
employees in the workplace. So, as you
probably know, we do a lot of training
and a lot of its for construction teams.
And I always like to ask this question,
do you remember how you felt when you're
engaged to be married? Now you might be
surprised to know that the women in the
room will typically give me different
answers than the men in the room. But
still, go along with me. Do you remember
what it was like when you're engaged to
be married? What did you feel like? were
you excited hopefully? were you looking
forward to it? something positive? As we
talked about trying to influence our
employees so that they'll be engaged in
the workplace,
this is what we're looking for. We're
looking for somebody who is emotionally
committed just like when I was engaged
to be married to my husband. Emotionally
committed to show up and be married to
him on a certain date. We are asking our
employees to be emotionally committed to
show up to work at a certain time to do
a certain thing. So, let's talk about
those engaged employees. How are we going
to get there? what do we do? Gallup has
done a ton of research on this and
actually I think the statistics are kind
of depressing. In the Gallup, the most
recent Gallup survey that I could find,
they estimate that only thirty percent
of our employees are truly engaged in an
average day at work. They say that fifty
percent are disengaged. So when I ask
people, what do you think that means? they
usually say, "well they're on their
Facebook, on their Twitter, doing other
things besides their work". But then,
there's another statistic that goes with
it and that is that twenty percent are
actively disengaged.
So not only just not engaged and not
really into it, but actively disengaged
which in my mind means they're hurting
the company. Now, the first thing that
comes in my mind when I think of that is,
I have teenagers.
My teenagers have a lot of friends that work
at fast-food restaurants. It is appalling
to me how many times their friends will
say, "hey, if you come tonight while I'm
working and the managers not there, I can
get you free food" And I have to use my
influence model to influence my kids to
say, that's not our idea. That's not our
values. That's not the way that we think.
Because that's not being honest. They
don't have permission to give away the
food from their restaurant. So they're
actively disengaged and actually hurting
their company. But what about that big
section in the middle? what about this
section of 50% of our employees that are
not currently engaged in the workforce.
What are we going to do? Let me help you
find some solutions. So as we move into,
what are the solution?s how do we do this?
There is some key research from Gallup
and I say, if they've already done the
research why not use it to our advantage?
So Gallup has come up with 12 elements
of engagement. Now these are things that
they've identified that have proven to
be able to help employees be more
engaged. So I'm going to list these for
you because one of the exercises that I
do and I when I work with organizations, is that
we take these 12 things and then we let
the employees tell us, which of these are
most important? which would be more
motivating to me as an individual? So I
want to just share them with you. Number
one, is I know what is expected of me.
Again, that goes back to clarity builds
trust. Do our employees really know
what's expected of them?
Number two, I have what I need as far as
materials and equipment to do my work
and to do it right. Are we asking those
questions? Number three, I have the
opportunity to do what I do best every
day. To me, that sounds like maybe
that's kind of an ideal situation? But
why not work towards that? Do you know
what your employees do best? Number four,
in the last week, I have received
recognition or praise for doing good
work. Alright, I don't know if you watch
the video we did about the Millennials
but if you have Millennials in your
workforce, they
want praise and recognition. If that's
not our standard, we need to learn how to
do it. We can talk to them, we can email
them, we can write them a thank-you note,
we even have one client that we work
with and on their time card system it
actually comes with an option to be able
to send somebody a thank-you note when
they're feeling after they turn in their
time card to tell them what you
appreciated that week. So number five, is
my supervisor cares about me as a person.
Number six, is I have a development plan
in place. That goes back to, can they see
a future with your company? Number seven,
my opinion seems to count. Are you
creating a culture where people know
it's safe to share their opinion? to
share their ideas? Number eight, is I know
our mission and I know how my job fits
into that and it's an important part of
the mission. Number nine, my fellow
employees are committed to quality work.
So in order for people to be engaged, if
the people around them they're in fellow
employees are engaged in quality work,
it's more likely that they will be
engaged themselves. Number ten, I have a
really great friend at work. Something
that we probably don't think about but
it's important. Things like, "question of
the day" help us find out what do we have
in common? and how can we become better
friends at work? Number eleven, in the
last six months
someone has talked to me about my
progress. Again, they want a future with
the company. They want to know that
somebody's talking to them, understanding
them, knowing the path that they're on.
And number 12, in the last year I've had
opportunities at work to learn and to
grow. So I know that was a lot of
information, but really these things are
at the core of employee engagement. So we
will have these accessible to you in the
link below. I hope that you will think
about these and then like I say, take
these and go to your ploys and
have them rank them. Have them tell you,
what are the three or four most
important things to them. Is it to have a
best friend at work? or maybe they really
don't have the equipment and the
materials that they need to do a really
good job.
Maybe they haven't had an opportunity to
be able to talk about their progress in
the path that they can move on to be
able to move up in your company. But if
you don't ask the question you don't
know what's most important to them. One
of my favorite exercises to do when we
work with organizations on employee
engagement, goes back to my model of the
upper arrow. And just a real quick
overview, the model is such that every
company has to be able to define the
quality of their product and services. If
you don't have quality product and
service, you will not stay in business.
But once you have that, and once you
deliver that consistently to your
clients, to your customers, then you have
to figure out how do I differentiate
myself? What's going to set me apart? and
that's where what I call the upper arrow
comes in. What is the differentiator? For
me, in my business, it was baking
chocolate-chip cookies. Because no other
engineers were doing that. Well, when we
work with organizations and work on
employee engagement, we take that same
model and we sit down with employees and
we say, "okay, let's take time to define
what are the product and services that
you provide?" You would be amazed how many
times people aren't really sure. Well I do
this and I do that and I go to meetings
and... help them to get really clear on
what products and services do they
provide, who are the customers that they
provide that to. That's the part of the
diagram that has to be done before you
can even think about going to the upper
arrow. So we start with that and we help
people get in a place where they're
really, really clear about, this is my job,
these are my responsibilities, this is
how I provide quality products and
services to our clients. Maybe they're
internal customers that they provide to.
After that, then we talk about the upper
arrow.
We talk about ways that we can
individually, utilize an upper arrow that
will help the company and really add
value and at the same time, I'm becoming
more engaged as an employee. One of my
favorite examples is an organization
that we are working with and the office
manager was really into fitness. She's
run over 40 marathons, and she exercises,
and she's really into fitness. And as
we're having this discussion about
what's an upper arrow that you could
provide to add value to the company, she
said, "you know what? we've never had an
employee wellness program. I think it
would be really fun to do something in
the company where we're encouraging
wellness among everybody". So they said. "go
ahead, let's do that. what does that look
like?". They gave her a budget, and they
just let her go after it. Well, she went
to work, she ordered some pedometers, and
they were even engraved with the name of
the company on him and then her budget
was such that she could get them for
everyone and their families not just the
employees. So they had pedometers for
everyone. They started a weekly check-in
where they would record their number of
steps that they're getting. And they had
little contest, they split the families
into groups and had little contests for
healthy habits which included not just
the walking or running but also water,
nutrition, sleep. And then they had a big
celebration. So this is a way that she
absolutely added value to the company
through her upper arrow, but do you think
she was more excited to come to work? I
promise you she was. It was something
that she owned. Something she was
empowered to do, something that, she, she
just took that over. So, it's a total
win-win because the company had more
value, they had more healthy, and excited
employees. And at the same time, this
office manager was much more passionate,
much more engaged, in what she was doing.
Because this is something that she loved.
So as we sit with teams, this is what we
do, is we try to help them identify
what's an upper arrow? So use the model
of the
for arrow and help every employee figure
out what are the quality product and
service that I provide? who do I provide
them to? and then how can I go above and
beyond and really implement an upper
arrow that adds value to the company and
will help me be even more engaged as an
employee.
I certainly hope you enjoyed
this episode of hero TV and thanks as
always to Sydney for sharing all this
great info. Put a lot of details down in
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And remember to live on purpose, make a
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