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Managing = Caring
 Managing = Caring 1080 565 Jason Lauritsen
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The longer I study and teach management, the simpler things become.

For example, this week, I was again asked how managing a hybrid team is different than managing a team that is in the office full-time. 

When someone asks this question, they are expecting me to share how managing a hybrid team is more challenging. They expect me to validate their belief that it’s far more complicated to manage a hybrid team.

It’s not. 

Is managing a hybrid team different in some ways? Sure. 

Just like being in a long-distance relationship is different than one where you see your partner every day. 

What’s true in both cases is that if you don’t have the right foundation in place for the relationship, nothing else really matters.  

The most important ingredient in both cases is care.  

Being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t care about you is miserable regardless of how much you see them, we’ve all been there.

At some point in our career, most of us have worked for managers who we saw every day, who clearly didn’t care about us or our success and it sucks. 

When you don’t care about your people as a manager, they will never step up for you. They will never give their best effort. They will never trust you. They will never be loyal. 

If you don’t care about your people, they will move on to another job where they at least have some hope that their manager might care. 

Caring is where it starts

Years ago, I remember chatting over coffee with a friend. We both had young children and were commiserating over our parental worries and insecurities.

We were both obsessing over how our actions and the decisions we make for our children. They feel so important–as if we were somehow creating and removing opportunities for our children in every instance. 

After an hour or more of participating in this game of “No, I think I’m messing my kids up more than you,” my friend paused for a moment and smiled. 

She looked over at me and said, “I think the fact we care so much about all of this is a good sign we are doing okay as parents.” 

This was well over a decade ago and I still remember those words vividly. 

Caring is the first step toward doing it right.  

Do you care enough? 

This may seem like a simple question, but it’s really a gut check as a manager.

  • Do you care enough to prioritize your people’s needs, sometimes above your own?
  • Do you care enough to do the hard work of creating clarity about expectations?
  • Do you care enough to hold your people accountable and be accountable to them in return?
  • Do you care enough to help people with things you “shouldn’t have to” help with? 
  • Do you care enough to be patient and kind when people fail? 
  • Do you care enough to give people the benefit of the doubt? 
  • Do you care enough to have your people’s back, even when it means putting yourself at risk?

Caring is the job of management. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s real work. 

Here’s the truth. If you don’t care about your people and really want to see them succeed in their personal and professional lives, then you shouldn’t be in management. Hard stop.  

Your people deserve better. 

If you aren’t sure if you care enough, you probably don’t, but as long as you are willing to do the work, you can fix it.  

How do you become more caring as a manager? 

Caring is a choice. Granted, it’s not an optional choice. If you want to be a manager, then you must choose to care for your people. 

If you can’t be bothered with doing the work of caring, then you should find another job to do. There are plenty of jobs out there that don’t require this work. 

Managing = caring. Below are some steps you can take to ensure that you are demonstrating to your people that you care so they will stick with you and give you their best.

1. Get your mind right. 

Your job is to enable the success of each member of your team. Enable is the keyword here. People want to succeed. They will choose success over failure whenever given the opportunity. 

People don’t need to be motivated to perform. Read that again. Instead, what people require is a manager who ensures they have what they need to perform well. That might mean support for their mental health one day and clarity about work goals the next. They need what they need. People are complicated. Our job isn’t to judge, it’s to help. 

People also need a manager who will help them with challenges whenever those challenges arise. Work can feel like an obstacle course with one challenge to face after another. Your job is to help them navigate the course, helping them reach the goal. Remove obstacles when you can. Help them face or get around them when you can’t. You are in it together. 

So many managers get this wrong. They think their job is to force people to perform. They micromanage like some overlord assuming that it’s their actions that drive performance when in fact, it’s the opposite. Micromanagement kills the desire to perform. 

Caring managers approach their jobs more like a farmer who cultivates the growth of their crops. Farmers know that if they provide what their plants need and deal with any threats or obstacles that might hinder growth, the plants will do the rest.

People have an incredible capacity to perform when we cultivate it in this way. 

2. Get to know your people. 

This feels like one of those things that Captain Obvious would say. When people talk about employers they hate, they say things like, “you feel like you are just a number to them.” 

If you want someone to feel like you don’t care, make no effort to learn anything about them. Feeling unseen and unvalued is a red carpet invitation to go find a different job. It’s like saying “Nobody here cares if I stay or go.”

Getting to know your people is perhaps one of the fastest and most effective ways to develop your caring skills as a manager. Invest in getting to know your people as people. It’s simple. Three steps.

  1. Ask questions. For example, what do you have planned for the weekend? Or, where did you grow up? Any question that invites them to share some insights about who they are is a good one. 
  2. Listen. If you ask a good question and then signal that you really want to hear their response by shutting up, making eye contact and waiting, they will reveal some wonderful things. 
  3. Make some notes. Unless you have an incredible memory or are somehow gifted with another superpower that helps you never forget anything important, jot down what you learn in these conversations. This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I would ask great questions, listen intently and be delighted with what I heard. Then, I’d forget to write down what I heard and I would forget. What a waste. Don’t make my mistake. 

When you get to know people better, your natural caring and compassion instincts will kick in. The more you know, the more you will care. 

3. Check-in

Once you embrace that your job as a manager is to care for the needs and success of your people, the importance of a check-in becomes clear. 

If you aren’t in touch with what is going on with each of your people to know what they need and where they have challenges, how can you support them? 

That’s what makes the check-in the most powerful tool in management. An effective check-in involves having the most important conversations with your people so you can be the manager they need.  

Here’s how an effective check-in works. It starts with asking the right question. 

Here’s a simple, powerful question you can use to start a great check-in. 

How are you today, on a scale from 1 to 10?

The scale is the magic here. When we ask someone how they are without it, what do they say? 

Fine. Busy. Or, as my son likes to say, “decent.” These words tell us nothing. 

With the scale, a simple number tells you a whole lot. There’s a major difference between someone who says they are a 9 versus a 2. Either way, it’s an invitation to have a meaningful conversation. 

If someone says they are at the top end of the scale, ask them to share what’s been going well lately. You’ll learn about them and what matters to them. This is your chance to be excited for them and even to celebrate their accomplishments. 

If they are on the bottom end of the scale, that’s a cry for help. Ask them if they’d be comfortable sharing what’s going on that’s pulling that number down. It could be a work challenge but more likely, it’s something else going on in their life.  

Regardless of what it is, that is the thing you need to be focused on. Hear them out, express your care and support, and find a way to help.

If their response to the question is something in the middle, say a 5, it sets up a great conversation. Ask them first what’s going well. Listen and be encouraging. 

Then, ask them what’s going on that is keeping them from being at a 9 or 10. This is where they will share with you the insights you need to be supportive and caring.  

Done right, the check-in will transform your impact and results as a manager. It is caring in action. 

Managing = Caring

These are but a few ways to start investing more in caring for your team. 

There are a lot of ways to care. The key is to feel it and do it. Without caring, you cannot and will not be a successful manager in today’s environment. 

Care intensely. Care often.

Care. 

 

Rather watch than read? 

If you prefer video over reading, here you go. (Bonus points if you can spot my son)

 

***

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Why Now is the Perfect Time for an Employee Engagement Survey
 Why Now is the Perfect Time for an Employee Engagement Survey 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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Last week, I launched a survey to better understand what challenges leaders are anticipating during the next year related to employee engagement.

Some themes are emerging in the data. There’s concern about employee burnout. There’s a focus on how to keep remote and hybrid workers engaged. There’s also some worry about the impact of return to office plans.

All of these are valid concerns to have on the radar as we head towards what will assuredly be another year defined by uncertainty and change.

But I want to offer a word of caution, as you consider what you think will be your biggest employee engagement challenges in 2022, ask yourself this:

What evidence do I have that this is a real issue? 

Back in my days as an HR exec, there was nothing more frustrating than sitting in an executive meeting listening to a leader speculate about what employees wanted or how they were feeling with no real evidence to back it up beyond perhaps a single conversation they had with an employee or an article they read.

So many decisions that get made in organizations on behalf of employees are based on assumptions about what employees want or need. That often leads to actions taken and investments made with good intentions that end up having no effect or worse.

For example, it might be easy to assume that employees who work remotely are less engaged or more difficult to engage than those who work in the office. But, there’s a mounting body of research that suggests that may be the opposite. Our traditional physical workplaces might actually be a cause of disengagement for employees.

To make matters even more complicated, the degree to which working remotely engages or disengages an employee is going to vary from person to person. Their personality, personal living situation, past experiences, skills, and a host of other factors all play a role.

Here’s the harsh reality check. If you assume your employees as a whole are either more (or less) engaged by working remotely, either way, you are probably wrong. Or at least you are partially wrong and that can have real consequences on the decisions you make and programs you roll out.

Assumptions lead to frustration

So, do you have any evidence to support your specific concerns or conclusions about what you need to do to engage employees in 2022? If so, kudos. You are on the right path.

If not, I’ll echo what I said in an executive meeting once upon a time as the leaders around the table were speculating about what our employees needed from us.

“Why are we making assumptions about what they want? They are right out there. Let’s go ask them.”

As work is transforming in front of our eyes and shifting beneath our feet, it is affecting everyone differently. Some people are struggling while others are thriving.

We can’t make assumptions about what people need and how the experience is impacting them. It’s imperative to get real feedback on an ongoing basis if you hope to retain people through all of this change.

This is why NOW is the ideal time to be using employee engagement surveys to gather insights and evidence to inform your decisions and actions heading into next year.

A well-designed survey process will help you identify:

  • Who’s thriving and who’s struggling
  • Where you have systemic issues that might be driving turnover and performance issues
  • Where you have strengths and resources to leverage
  • Where you have significant risks and need to dig in further
  • What issues you can address immediately

This is only a partial list of why well-designed surveys are powerful. As a manager, survey results from your team are one of the best tools you can have to facilitate a meaningful conversation about each person’s experience and how to make it better (more on that later).

5 Keys to a Well-Designed Employee Engagement Survey Process

Notice that I didn’t just say “survey.” It needs to be well-designed and it needs to be part of a process that ensures that actions are taken based on what is learned. Below are key things you need to do to get it right.

1. A commitment and process for meaningful follow-up action.

The most important part of any survey is what happens with the results. Do they lead to change and impact that the employees can see or feel? It is vital that you have a documented process in place for how action will be taken on survey results BEFORE you even consider launching a survey.

Without follow-up actions from the survey results being visible to all employees, a survey will often do more to undermine trust and engagement than if you did no survey at all.

2. Use a survey with a validated measure of employee engagement.

Most, if not all, of the engagement survey products out there, will have a validated set of survey items they use to measure employee engagement. The company should be able to share with you (or you should be able to find it on their website) some documentation about how they measure engagement and the process they used to make sure it’s valid.

This is important because you need confidence in that measurement of engagement because you’ll want to use it as a filter and means of comparison to evaluate what groups are more engaged than others and what factors are either driving or diminishing engagement.

3. Be thoughtful about what questions you ask.

It is always tempting to use the off-the-shelf set of questions from any survey tool, but I’d caution against that, particularly now. Before even looking at the survey questions, you should go through a process to determine and document what questions you really want to answer through the survey.

For example, you might write down questions like:

  • Do people feel like we care about them? How do they know?
  • How/when/where do people prefer to work?
  • What are the biggest challenges people are facing right now in getting work done?
  • Where do we have the most risk or evidence of employee burnout?
  • How are people feeling about our return to office plans?

These aren’t meant as recommendations, just an example of what might end up on your list. With this documented, you can now start the process of designing your survey. As you evaluate the questions you ask, you can keep coming back to this list to ensure you are at least attempting to answer the most important questions.

4. Import as many demographics into your survey platform as you can.

Let me say this first, never do anonymous surveys. Ever. If your culture is so toxic that you can’t fathom a survey that’s not totally anonymous, you’ve got bigger problems than a survey can solve.

A confidential survey (which means that you assure the employees that their individual responses are treated as confidential) is just as effective in eliciting responses as an anonymous survey, but you end up with much better data.

With that said, when you set up your survey, import as many meaningful demographic characteristics as you can export from your HRIS system. Why? Because the more you set up, the more ways you’ll be able to sort and review your data.

Everything that describes an employee’s role should be included, such as department, location, job level, comp level, tenure, performance evaluation data, manager, etc.

If you are worried about the engagement of remote, hybrid, and onsite employees, this also needs to be included. If you don’t have that data in a field in your HRIS system, then add a question to your survey to get it from the employee.

You should also include all the personal demographics you can: gender, age, race, marital status, parental status, etc. Particularly now and given what’s happened in the world over the past 18 months, our unique work experiences may be more influenced by these factors than anything else. And that’s a story that is profoundly important for you to understand and address in the near term.

5. Get the results to the individual managers as quickly as possible (with some instructions and training on what to do with them).

I alluded to this earlier, but the place where the biggest immediate impact can happen as a result of any engagement survey is at the individual manager level. This is a lesson I learned firsthand as a manager nearly 20 years ago when my organization rolled out the Gallup Q12 process.

At the time, I didn’t even have a team big enough to warrant getting our own results, but I had been taught how to use the results at the HR team level to facilitate a conversation with my people about their engagement and experience. It was a game-changer for my team and me.

The survey results are a catalyst for management transformation. When a manager uses those results to sit down with their team and ask them to share their experiences and thoughts about how the team is doing well and could get better, things change.

It’s not enough to just give managers the results. Don’t make that mistake. They need guidance in making sense of the results, sharing the results with their team, facilitating a discussion with the team about the results, and leading some collaborative action planning with their team. Results plus support and training equals transformation.

Now is a perfect time for a survey

The best time for a survey is when you are most uncertain about what employees need or how they are doing. An engagement survey isn’t about optimizing an arbitrary number. It’s about gathering data to inform better decisions that impact employees so you can retain them and help them perform at their best.

Whether you have a team of 5 people or an organization of 25,000 that you support, a good survey done the right way is one of the most effective and efficient ways to improve performance and drive retention.

If you have specific questions about surveys and how to best use them, drop those in the comments and I’ll be happy to address those for you.

The Right Way to Support Employee Productivity
 The Right Way to Support Employee Productivity 1080 540 Jason Lauritsen
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Given where we find ourselves at the end of 2020, it’s not surprising that one of the biggest concerns being discussed by managers and leaders everywhere is employee productivity.

Whether your work requires you to be face-to-face with customers or patients or it confines you to a home office, there are more stressors and distractions to deal with at work today than ever before.

And as we settle into the cold winter months with pandemic trend lines pointed in the wrong directions, there’s rightful concern about employee wellbeing. An already tenuous situation is about to get worse.

With all of this happening around our people, it’s not out of line for you to be concerned about how to maintain performance levels.

So we ask, “How do we maintain employee productivity?”

This question worries me. Not so much because of the intent behind the question, but rather the use of the word, “productivity.”

Like many of the words we use in the context of work, this one is a little unclear and comes with a lot of baggage.

Productivity is one of those words that is a holdover from management’s origins in the industrial revolution. During those times, the primary job of management was to extract every bit of useful work effort out of each employee’s time on the clock.

The goal of productivity was to maximize the value that could be extracted from an employee. To maximize the return on investment in the employee’s salary.

While this made sense and was incredibly effective during a time where most work was done in factories on lines, some still use the word today to mean the same thing: to get as much work out of the employee as possible.

But, work has changed. A lot. And this way of thinking about productivity is part of what’s contributing to our current crises and leading so many people down a path to burnout.

Not THAT Kind of Productivity

There is an alternative. It reveals itself most clearly when we think about what a productive day looks like in our own lives.

Take a minute to think about the most productive day you’ve had in the past month. What happened on that day that made you label it as productive? How do you remember feeling that day?

For me, it was a day when I had a clear picture of what needed to be accomplished and completed everything in a way that felt good. At the end of the day, I felt accomplished and gave myself permission to unplug as a reward.

Your own experience may have been a day without meetings or distractions. It might have been a day when you made progress on a meaningful project you’d been putting off.

When we think about our own productivity, we think in terms of how well we are able to use our time to get done what really matters. That’s very different from the industrial definition.

No one gets to the end of the day and thinks, “Wow, I was really productive today because I literally can’t give any more effort to the company.”

As we think about how to help our people to be more productive, we need to be very clear about what we are talking about. Here’s a simple way to break it down:

In today’s world of work, productivity shouldn’t be about maximizing the value that can be extracted from employees—it’s about helping the employee most effectively and efficiently accomplish their performance objectives.

What does productivity require?

To understand productivity, we need only to examine our own experience of when we feel productive. There are some common ingredients required.

  1. Clarity about what matters and what needs to get done. Productivity isn’t about getting more work done. It’s about getting the right work done. This requires crystal clear goals and objectives. It also requires that the employee understands what is most important and why so they can prioritize completing tasks effectively. Defining expectations is doubly critical for employees working from home because they need to know with confidence how much is enough so they can maintain some balance. Otherwise, fear fueled by the uncertainty of our current world will drive them to work until they crash.
  2. Visibility to progress and impact. Part of what makes work feel unproductive is feeling like what you are doing isn’t moving things forward or making a difference. If employees are clear on what’s expected and what matters, the next thing they need is a way to know that they are making progress. This could be as simple as submitting a finished project, but in other cases it requires feedback and recognition from a manager or their peers.
  3. The resources and support needed. Nothing kills productivity faster than trying to get work done and finding that you lack what you need to do it. To head this off requires a conversation when setting expectations to anticipate and plan for resource needs. It also requires ongoing check-ins from managers to inquire about needs to ensure they’re being met.
  4. Remove obstacles. We are often our own worst enemy when it comes to supporting employee productivity. The fastest way to identify obstacles is to simply ask your people what’s the biggest challenge they face in feeling more productive each day. The most common thing you are likely to hear is meetings. Most meetings are kryptonite to productivity. I’ll be writing more about this soon, but for now, resist the urge to add meetings to your team’s schedule. Be very clear about the purpose and intention of any meetings you schedule and only include those who will get real value from being there.

Productivity and Employee Engagement

When we get clear about what we are trying to accomplish with productivity, it becomes clear that this conversation is really about employee engagement—at least in the way I define it, which is the degree to which employees are willing and able to perform to their potential.

The bottom line is that if you are doing a good job of managing and engaging your team, productivity will happen. There’s nothing new or magical we need to learn to support productivity, we just need to focus on doing the fundamentals (like those I just outlined) that we should have been doing all along.

Employee Engagement for You: September 2020 Edition
 Employee Engagement for You: September 2020 Edition 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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Employee Engagement For You

The honeymoon is over.

That’s actually both a terrible and perfect way to describe where we are right now. The past six months haven’t felt anything like a honeymoon, but they may end up feeling that way in hindsight someday.

When everything changed in the spring, we buckled down and adapted because we had no choice. We dialed up safety precautions. We closed offices and sent people home.

And then the waiting game started. It’s only a matter of time before this is over, we thought.

We are still waiting. And it’s looking like the wait might not be over for a long while. While we wait, the strain of this new working world is starting to break us down.

Employees, who largely stepped up in the early days of work from home, are starting to feel the fatigue and strain. I spoke to an HR leader yesterday who said they’ve seen productivity start to fall and more people calling in sick than ever before.

The challenge of managing and engaging a remote and distributed team is not going away. It’s a reality we must not only face but embrace.

The good news is that the fundamentals are the same. The bad news is that we often weren’t great at the fundamentals before this happened.

If you want to take steps to ensure your employees stay engaged, here are the two actions to take now.

  1. Ask employees about their experiences (through surveys, focus groups, conversations, etc.), listen intently for what they need, and where there are gaps, fix them. We don’t need to guess about what employees need to feel more engaged—we can just ask them.
  2. Ensure manager/employee one-on-one meetings are happening with frequency. There is no more powerful tool for employee engagement than an effective one-on-one meeting. A great one-on-one is scheduled, frequent, and valuable for the employee. Put a focus on appreciation and coaching to maximize the value.

If you do nothing else, put your energy behind these two things. This journey is far from over. Stay focused and keep going. You matter.

Until next time,

Jason

P.S. What is the biggest challenge you are facing with managing remote employees? Hit reply right now and tell me about what you’ve found the most difficult.

Stuff You Should Read

If you want a condensed, useful article with some good advice for how to manage remote teams, here’s one I recommend. Lots of good advice in a small package. Read: 12 Tips For Managing a Remote Team (And Loving It).

This past week, the ADP Research Institute, which is in part led by Marcus Buckingham, released some new data on workplace resilience. The full report breaks down how they measured workplace resilience (including the 10 factors that their research suggests are drivers of it) and the key findings of this research. It’s a unique and interesting perspective on the topic with some surprising findings. Read: Workplace Resilience Study.

My advice lately has been to avoid jumping to any conclusions about what work is going to look like post-pandemic. We are apt to misinterpret signals and assume greater significance in some trends than they deserve. This brought to mind one of my favorite business books of all time, The Halo Effect. It will change how you think about business (and how you read business books) forever. Read: The Halo Effect.

stuff you should hear

What if we randomly selected who we promoted into management? That’s the question I was left Headphonespondering after listening to this recent episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. It will challenge you to think differently about a few things. Proceed with caution. Listen now.stuff you should watch

You know that interview question, “What three people, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?” This month, I got to have a conversation on my webcast with one of the people who is on my list, Gary Hamel. It was a highlight moment of my career and he really delivered the goods in our conversation. Watch: My Conversation with Gary Hamel.

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working human
Employee Engagement Essentials Post-COVID
 Employee Engagement Essentials Post-COVID 1000 555 Jason Lauritsen
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I originally wrote this post for my friends at Workhuman. I asked their permission to share it here as well because I thought you might find it valuable. If you’d like to view the original post, you can find it here:  https://www.workhuman.com/resources/globoforce-blog/employee-engagement-essentials-post-covid. 

This week, all over the U.S., schools are reopening and millions of kids are heading back to the classroom. As educators and parents navigate their way through this process, there are big questions to be answered.

Don’t worry, this isn’t another post debating school openings. Rather, as I’ve been both watching and experiencing this process personally, it struck me that the challenge of school reopening isn’t too different from what organizations are wrestling with in terms of what the “workplace” looks like post-COVID.

At the heart of both issues is the reality that we are living through a global pandemic that no one was fully prepared for. The past several months have produced change at a pace we’ve rarely experienced. We’ve all been knocked off balance.

As we look to the future for both schools and our organizations, one thing is for sure – the future won’t look anything like the past. Too much has changed and there are too many new forces in play now. But not everything has changed.

The key to success on the road ahead is identifying the important things that have stayed the same and keeping sight of those as you navigate the key changes. Here I unpack what’s changed and what hasn’t for organizations that want to continue to engage employees through and beyond COVID.

What employee engagement essentials haven’t changed?

Let’s begin with two things that haven’t changed and likely never will for employee engagement. I like to call these the fundamentals. No matter how much the world changes, there are core needs employees need satisfied to stay engaged in their work. These were important before COVID, they are vital now, and they will continue to be critical in the future.

Communication

Communication is an essential ingredient to employee engagement and should stay at the heart of any effort to improve engagement and performance.

But I’m not talking about sending more formal email updates or posting memos on the company intranet. To drive engagement, communication is about creating greater clarity and reducing uncertainty for each employee.

The importance of communication can be summarized in three words: uncertainty kills engagement.

Uncertainty is dangerous because of how our brains have evolved to keep us safe. The fight-or-flight response means that our brains will frequently interpret an unknown stimulus as a threat and will trigger a response that preserves our safety. This helps us stay alive. If you are walking through the woods at night and hear a sound you can’t identify, it’s not bad to have a fear response and do what you need to do to stay safe (run, turn on a flashlight, etc.).

The problem is that the brain isn’t particularly discerning about the type of unknown stimulus. It generally reacts to that uncertainty in the woods in a similar way as it does to uncertainty at work. When we are uncertain, our brain fills in the details in a way that creates a fear response to help us find safety.

This is what makes uncertainty in the office really dangerous to engagement. Think back to the last time your boss requested an impromptu meeting with you and provided no explanation. You likely had at least a flash of anxiety or panic as you imagined all the negative things that might have prompted the request (“OMG, I’m getting fired”). Or maybe you started racking your brain for what you may have done wrong recently.

When we don’t know what’s happening, our mind creates a story that is often much worse than what’s actually happening. It’s our brain’s way of preparing us for something bad to happen so we can protect ourselves. We don’t need to be prepared for unexpected good news, so the default setting when we fill in the details is the worst-case scenario.

This is what makes communication so important. The key is to keep ongoing, two-way communication happening at all times. This includes manager check-ins, team meetings, senior leader forums, and employee surveys. Any activity that identifies areas of uncertainty for employees and attempts to replace that uncertainty with clarity is engagement communication.

If you want to fuel engagement today and in the future, invest more time and intention on communication to combat uncertainty.

Appreciation

Nearly twenty years ago, Don Clifton and Tom Rath from Gallup published the book, “How Full Is Your Bucket?” This was in response to a finding in Gallup’s employee survey data that 65% of employees reported receiving zero moments of positive recognition in the previous year at work. That’s two-thirds of employees who said they showed up to work every day for a year and no one ever offered up even a simple “thank you.”

On my optimistic days, I want to believe we’ve gotten better at this over the past two decades, but my experience suggests that any gains we’ve made have been small. Far too many employees still feel undervalued and unappreciated at work. And this was before the new era of remote and distributed work ushered in by COVID.

If we weren’t expressing enough appreciation to one another when we were in the same physical space together, this won’t likely improve when we are physically apart. This is a problem because we know that feeling valued and appreciated are drivers of employee engagement.

To meet this challenge, we have to think more broadly about how to create moments of recognition and appreciation. Employees should experience acknowledgment and appreciation from their manager through regular check-ins and one-on-one meetings. But co-workers can also play an important role. If you want to make huge leaps in helping your employees feel more appreciation, there are two places to focus.

First, you need to make appreciation and recognition a part of how you do things. This might mean having “shoutouts” as part of your team meeting agenda. It could also mean implementing a technology tool to enable peer-to-peer recognition and make it easy for all employees to share and receive. The other key is to teach people how to show appreciation. If we were naturally great at it, this wouldn’t be such a huge issue. Simple training, guidance, and role modeling have a big impact. The more people see and experience genuine appreciation, the more likely they are to pay it forward.

How has employee engagement changed post-COVID?

While the core drivers of engagement, like the two just outlined, haven’t meaningfully changed, there are some essential factors that have. These are not necessarily new considerations, but rather some factors that have been elevated in importance based on external forces.

Flexibility

A number of years ago, when I was involved in Best Places to Work research, we conducted some exploratory research to check our assumptions about what was most important to and valued by employees in their job. The results surprised us. Flexibility emerged as one of the most highly valued elements of the work experience.

Employees’ desire for greater flexibility isn’t new. Some organizations (pre-COVID) even used flexible work arrangements as a competitive advantage in attracting talent. This was effective because so many other organizations were telling employees that flexibility considerations, like working from home, were not possible.

Now that employees know what’s possible, there’s no going back. Employees now know that it was never a matter of it not being possible, it was that leadership didn’t trust them. Employees have proven that they can be productive away from the office, even at home under really hard circumstances.

Notice I’m using the phrase flexibility, not “work from home.” What’s changed isn’t necessarily that everyone wants to work from home. When the dust settles and it’s safe to go back to the office, the key question isn’t “do we or don’t we?” Instead, the opportunity will be to step back and, with feedback from your employees, to redesign how, when, and where work best gets done.

If your organization values having people physically together, work with employees to imagine and create a workplace experience that employees crave. Create a place where they want and prefer to be. Then you can give them the freedom to choose.

The bottom line is that post-COVID, if you intend to limit or dictate when, where, or how an employee does their work, you had better be able to defend that with a clear and legitimate business reason. Leader and manager comfort or preference won’t cut it.

Safety 

This may seem a bit obvious, but I don’t think it can be understated how important safety is in terms of an employee’s experience of work. When we don’t feel safe, that same fight-or-flight fear response that interferes with communication also causes all kinds of other issues (both psychological and physiological) that are detrimental to our ability to do our best work.

While Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs clearly illustrates the vital importance of safety, most organizations have not focused on this area unless they rely on manual labor to create value.  Even the concept of “psychological safety,” which has become popular recently, is relatively new.

COVID has reminded all of us how fragile our sense of safety can be. Even if we cared about safety in the past, most of us took it for granted, particularly at work. Going forward, feeling safe is now a primary consideration. It is essential to our ability to be at our best and engaged fully in our work.

To foster a feeling of safety at and about work, remember that safety is intertwined with trust. When you consider the people in your life with whom you feel the safest, it’s likely people who you also trust the most completely. You know they have your best interests at heart, would never do anything to intentionally harm you, and would do everything in their power to protect you from harm.

For employees to feel truly safe at work, they need to believe the same to be true about the people who employ them. Not sure where to start? Ask your employees. They will tell you what’s working and what needs work. Take that feedback and do something about it. Over time, they will develop deep trust that whatever needs to be done to keep the workplace safe (and otherwise functioning well) will get done.

More human employee engagement post-COVID 

The common theme running through the four factors highlighted here is a deeper understanding of and connection to the core needs of the human being who’s doing the work. COVID forced us all to stop and take some account of what really mattered as organizations. At the top of that list was making sure our people were OK.

Employers are more intertwined in people’s lives than ever before. This is both an invitation and a wake-up call. We’ve learned that our people are resilient, capable, and committed. We’ve learned that work can get done in ways we didn’t recognize before. And we’ve been reminded that our employees are people who are also spouses, parents, children, and community members.

When we put the employee at the center of how we design and manage work with the focus on how to enable them to do their very best work in the context of their often complicated lives, everyone wins.

Employee Engagement for You: July 2020 Edition
 Employee Engagement for You: July 2020 Edition 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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Employee Engagement For You

When I feel overwhelmed or stressed, my go-to strategy to find my way back to feeling calm and centered is gratitude.

That allure of comfort is powerful. But that path leads nowhere. The old normal is gone. And good riddance. We can do better.

As I write this today, I’m feeling a bit of both. And, while I’ve got a lot to be grateful for in my life, I want to specifically focus on you.

I’m grateful that you allow me to visit your inbox. I’m grateful that you care enough about making work better to spend some time reading and thinking about how to make it happen.

And, I’m really grateful for your support. It means a lot when you show up for a webcast, forward my post to a colleague, or send me back a note.

Thank you. Sincerely. I am grateful for you.

The work you do matters and I’m so appreciative that you allow me to join you on that journey.

(Yep, I feel better already.)

Until next time,

Jason

P.S. I’m doing a cool webinar series with my friends at Limeade on how well-being drives performance. If you are interested, you can check it out and sign up here.

Stuff You Should Read

starAs we attempt to navigate the possibility of permanent remote work within each of our organizations, we should understand the implications of any decision we make: all remote, no remote, or hybrid. This article from the CEO of an all-remote organization can prompt you to think about aspects you may not have yet considered. Read: Hybrid Remote Work Offers the Worst of Both Worlds

starWe must pay close attention to issues of equity and inclusion as we chart what work looks like in each organization moving forward. We have the opportunity to close many gaps but we can also make things worse if we aren’t very intentional in what we do. This HBR article highlights some examples of where things can go wrong and what to do to prevent it. Read: Why WFH Isn’t Necessarily Good for Women

starRemote work or not, the challenge to engage your employees remains. This post by Nir Eyal outlines the concept of “Unconditional Positive Regard” which resonates with me both as a good personal practice and a framework for how to treat employees at work. Read: The Surprising Benefits of Unconditional Positive Regard

stuff you should hear

HeadphonesWhat if we randomly selected who we promoted into management? That’s the question I was left pondering after listening to this recent episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. It will challenge you to think differently about a few things. Proceed with caution. Listen now.stuff you should watch

Few things are more vital right now than trust. Trust is difficult to address both at work and in our personal lives. So, who better to provide us some clarity on the issue than Brené Brown? This video is one of the best twenty minutes you can spend to understand and take action to build trust.

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What Does Employee Engagement Mean? Everything You Need to Know
 What Does Employee Engagement Mean? Everything You Need to Know 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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“Employee engagement” has become such a common term that it’s easy to assume everyone knows exactly what it means. The words have a positive ring, for sure. (Most of us associate engagement with marriage and that’s a pretty happy time.) But what exactly does engagement mean at work? And how is it related to other similar phrases, such as employee satisfaction, employee experience, culture, and the rest?

I have dedicated the past 20 years of my career to employee engagement. As a result of being deep in it for so long, it’s easy for me to forget how confusing this language and concept can be for someone who doesn’t have that level of exposure.

If you’re not sure what this term really means or why it matters, this post is for you. Please know that you aren’t alone in your confusion.

In a nutshell, employee engagement is the connection between how an employee feels about their work experience and their performance on the job.

Employee engagement is an important concept that should be incredibly helpful to any organization or leader who cares about helping employees perform their best at work. But the idea was hijacked years ago by consultants and technologists who are more interested in selling you products than ensuring you understand how it works.

Let’s start by clearing up a few things.

Employee engagement is NOT a survey. Although businesses do use surveys to measure it.

Employee engagement is NOT a buzzword. It can feel that way but don’t be fooled. This is important work.

Employee engagement is NOT a fad. This work isn’t going anywhere. We are just getting started.

Enough about what employee engagement is not. Let’s dig into what it is and what you need to do about it.

employee

Employee Engagement Theory: Where It All Began

Over the past 30 years, the concept of employee engagement has become a central tenet in any discussion about workplace performance and culture. Today, people discuss engagement so commonly that it’s easy to assume that everyone knows what it is and how it works.

This is certainly not the case. While we have come to accept that employee engagement is a generally positive thing that we should want more of in our organizations, when you dig a little deeper, a real lack of clarity emerges.

The key reason for this is that employee engagement is an abstract concept. Employee engagement isn’t a tangible, concrete thing that is easy to identify and measure like sales revenue or customer retention.

Engagement is a framework made up by academics and consultants to help us measure and talk about things that happen in the workplace that are hard to understand individually–things like feelings and motivations.

The employee engagement idea was first brought to life in December 1990 by Boston University professor William Kahn. He was the first to publish research using the concept of “engagement” at work. The first sentence from his 1990 paper captures the challenge and promise of this work and why it’s still relevant 30 years later.

“This study began with the premise that people can use varying degrees of their selves, physically, cognitively, and emotionally, in work role performances, which has implications for both their work and experiences.”

Kahn put this work into motion. What followed has been an avalanche of research and tools for measuring and understanding employee engagement. The Gallup Organization also played a vital role in the popularization of the employee engagement by introducing their Q12 measure of engagement and using that as a foundation to benchmark employee engagement levels globally over the past two decades.

Thanks to Kahn and the other early pioneers, we have a more profound understanding of how the employee’s experience of work drives their performance, morale, loyalty, and more.

Ironically, what hasn’t emerged over the past 30 years is a common definition for employee engagement. There are nearly as many definitions of employee engagement as there are researchers and consultants. So let’s turn our attention to that next.


Employee Engagement Definition

As someone who’s been working in the field for well over a decade now, one of the most perplexing things about the work is the lack of a clear standard definition.

Consider that some estimate that organizations globally are spending over $6 billion a year on technology to improve engagement. That’s just the technology spend. The overall investment in initiatives and programs is probably two to three times that number.

All for something that those same organizations often can’t clearly define.

This is baffling. Getting clear on definition is crucial for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that definition is the first step of measurement. If we hope to measure our progress toward creating a more engaged workplace and quantify how it impacts organizational results, we must have an explicit definition for employee engagement.

Can you imagine an organization investing immense time and energy in the “financial health” of the organization without being crystal clear on what that meant?

employee engagement

Even at a personal level, the need for definition is clear. Nearly every person I know has at one point told me that they were trying to get “healthier.” That same thing has been true for me.

If improving your health is a goal, what exactly does that mean? If you don’t define what that means for you, how can you ever know if you are making progress?

For one person, health might mean weight loss. For another, it might mean stopping destructive behaviors like smoking or eating fried foods. Someone else might define it as getting 30 minutes of physical activity each day.

Only when you clearly define it can you effectively go to work on both measuring it and making intentional progress toward your objective.

Much like health, employee engagement is a broad concept that can mean a lot of things. Before starting your work to improve engagement, it is vital that you clearly articulate a definition.

The definition for your organization may be slightly different than the definition at another organization. The important thing is that it is articulated clearly in a way that can drive both action and measurement.

Below is the definition of employee engagement I use:

ENGAGEMENT is the degree to which an employee is both willing and able to perform to their potential.

It’s a simple definition. The outcome of engagement is high performance and the work of engagement is about facilitating the employee’s willingness and ability to be at their best at work.

A definition like this, while still broad, helps to clarify what this work is about and why it matters. It can also help you focus on what and how to measure your progress.

You will know that you have a clear definition of employee engagement when you (and the other leaders in your organization) have no issue explaining what it is and precisely why it’s essential to achieving your organization’s objectives.

employees on zoom

What Drives Employee Engagement?

A definition helps us clarify the meaning of the term, but most conversations about employee engagement focus on a different question: “How does it work?” If we want to improve or enhance this thing, where should we focus?

Fortunately, Gallup, the Great Place to Work Institute, American Psychological Association (APA), and many in the academic community have been measuring employee engagement for decades. Their research provides us with rich insights into how employees experience work and what motivates them to higher performance.

Regardless of what research or data you look at regarding employee engagement, you are likely to find some of the following factors listed as significant factors or “drivers” for employees:

  • Feeling valued
  • Trust
  • Caring
  • Appreciation
  • Belonging

The more employees experience these things at work, the more likely they are to be engaged.

What jumps out from this list is how relational each of these factors is. They sound more like what you would expect to be drivers of a healthy relationship than work. What these research findings reveal is that employees experience work in the same way they do any other meaningful relationship in their lives. When the relationship isn’t working or healthy, they are less likely to be or do their best.

Most organizations treat work like a contract with the employee rather than a relationship. In this way of thinking, employees receive pay and benefits in exchange for their work effort, and most management efforts are oriented around enforcing compliance with that contract.

Policy manuals, job descriptions, and performance appraisals are all management tools designed to help enforce the contract. The problem is that they do little to foster a healthy relationship with the employee, which leads to decreased employee engagement and higher turnover.

To create an experience of work that is engaging for employees, we need to embrace that work is a relationship for employees. This doesn’t mean that we throw out the policies or performance processes, just that we approach them in the spirit of fostering relationships.

That means designing management and team processes that encourage feelings of belonging, trust, caring, and appreciation. In the next section, we turn our attention to the specific strategies and practices that will most effectively help you to accomplish this.

zoom check in call

Employee Engagement Strategies: How to Improve Employee Engagement

Improving employee engagement requires a plan. And that plan will need to take into account the needs of the people you lead, the goals of the organization, and your personal aspirations.

To create an effective strategy, know your people and engage with them to create the best course of action. Your goal should be creating a work experience that feels good to employees so that they can do better work. What this looks like will be different for every team and every organization.

The single most powerful strategy for improving employee engagement is to talk to your teams about their experience at work and find opportunities where you could work together to make that experience better. Start with four simple steps:

      1. Check in with your people individually, as a group, or both. Ask about their experience and how it could be better.
      2. Listen intently and ask follow-up questions.
      3. Clarify what matters most and together identify what actions employees and managers should take to have the greatest positive impact.
      4. Take action to make things better.

For large groups, you might need to use tools like employee surveys or focus groups to check-in and listen to feedback, but the fundamentals of the process are always the same. Ask, listen, identify the issue, and take action. Rinse and repeat over and over forever.

If you are married or are in a serious relationship of any sort, you already know how vital this process is to ensure the relationship stays healthy. It’s when you quit checking in with one another that relationships tend to start cracking and falling apart. The same is true at work.

Make this process the foundation of your engagement strategy. It will ensure that you are engaged in an ongoing conversation with your people about how to make the work experience better. And if you do nothing beyond just this simple process, you will have taken a huge step to improve engagement on your team. This will result in both better performance and higher retention.

Employee Engagement Articles

Hungry for more reading that will help you deepen your knowledge of how to engage your employees? Here’s a short list to get you started.

If you’d like more content like this to arrive in your email box weekly, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here.

Employee Engagement For You: The Latest News June 2020
 Employee Engagement For You: The Latest News June 2020 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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Employee Engagement For You

Do you feel like you are standing at a fork in the road?

On one path, we attempt to circle back to return things to normal. We seek the comfort of how things used to be before COVID. Before George Floyd. Before everything changed.

That allure of comfort is powerful.  But that path leads nowhere. The old normal is gone. And good riddance. We can do better.

The second path is to recognize the opportunity in this moment. In the current disruption and chaos is the chance to shape a better future and leave the past behind.

To accomplish this will require more of us…

  • To learn and grow faster.
  • To ask bigger and better questions.
  • To unite and stand up for what really matters.

We can reshape work to finally work better for the humans who do it.

This is our moment and we must not miss it. If we work together, we can emerge from this time into a better, more just, more fulfilling future at work and beyond.

I’m taking the second path. I hope you will join me.

Until next time,

Jason

P.S. Thank you for the interest in my new Engagement Leader Community. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d invite you to take a peek and let me know what you think. The good news is that I’ve extended the introductory pricing. It’s a new way I’m hoping to help you amplify the impact of your work as we move forward.

Stuff You Should Read

starWhat will the post-COVID workplace look like? This question is perhaps one of the biggest we are all grappling with as we think about the path forward. This article from the NY Times provides a look into how Salesforce is preparing to bring people back to the office. It’s another reminder that normal as we knew it is gone. Read: Farewell to Gummy Bear Jars

starAs the U.S. experiences ongoing protests and calls to address systemic racism and injustice, employers and leaders are rightly being called upon to step up and take action. This HBR piece provides some helpful guidance on what that can look like. Read: U.S. Businesses Must Take Meaningful Action Against Racism

starA lot of people, perhaps you are one of them, are going through some really hard times right now. I’ve always struggled with knowing how to be supportive in the right way to those in crisis. This article describes how to use Susan Silk’s Ring Theory to guide behavior to provide support to those who most need it. I found it really helpful. Perhaps you will too. Read: 10 Tips to Offer Comfort to People in Crisis

stuff you should hear

If you haven’t discovered the Michael Lewis podcast, Against the Rules, today is your lucky day.work is a relationship icon It is currently in season two, which explores the rise and importance of coaching in all areas of our lives. It’s both entertaining and enlightening. Enjoy. Listen now. 

stuff you should watch

Since everything has been pretty heavy lately, I thought I’d end with something lighter. One of my favorite discoveries of the past few months is the Holderness Family on Youtube. Their parody videos are a way to find some real humor and joy in the weirdness that is our lives right now. This video, in particular, really nails a lot of what’s happening at our house this summer.

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Keeping Employees Connected (Without the Terrible Virtual Happy Hours)
 Keeping Employees Connected (Without the Terrible Virtual Happy Hours) 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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Whether it’s because your workforce is newly remote or because you can’t hold in-person meetings right now, you are probably worrying about how to keep your employees connected. This has been a common refrain in the conversations I’ve been having lately.

I’m excited that this is a top concern for organizations and leaders. It’s overdue. Even before the pandemic, it was debatable whether our employees were that connected. A move toward greater connection is a positive one that will yield benefits far into the future for both employees and employers.

Yours is probably like most organizations and has turned to technology to find solutions. Zoom meetings, virtual team huddles and happy hours, and video leadership briefings have all become routine. The good news from my seat is that it appears that employees, managers, and leaders are meeting more than ever.

But there’s some question about whether or not all of this meeting is translating into a true feeling of connection. In fact, the term “Zoom fatigue” has become pretty common. And it’s a real thing.

If you want to foster and accelerate a feeling of connection for employees, you can boil the secret down to this: meaningful activity.

When it comes to connection for employees, meaningful activity is crucial.

Let me back up for a minute to explain. In 2012, I published my first book, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships, which I co-wrote with my friend and collaborator, Joe Gerstandt. We wrote the book to equip people with the insights and tools they needed to build networks of authentic relationships as a pathway to achieving success.

Our journey to write the book began because people started asking us how we’d each cultivated such a big network of relationships. At first, we weren’t sure of the answer, but we were curious enough to try to find it. This led to years of work deconstructing our own experiences and comparing that against what research suggested about how relationships form.

In our research, one of the most powerful insights came from the book Achieving Success through Social Capital by Wayne Baker. Despite the sexy title, this is a powerful book. The big idea that stuck with us from this book involved meaningful activity.

First, I need to explain social capital in case you aren’t familiar with the term. Social capital is the value that we have access to through our relationships with others. This value can be both tangible and intangible. Being friends with the neighbor who owns every tool on the planet and will loan them to you because of your relationship is a tangible example. Another example right now might be knowing someone who has access to surplus hand sanitizer.

Intangible examples involve things like trust or support. Being able to reach out and ask someone for a favor or help, and knowing that they are likely to say yes, is a form of social capital. Having someone in your life who will always take your call and listen when you need a sympathetic ear is also an example.

Social capital only exists in relationships where people have created some real connection to one another. They have some level of familiarity, trust, and often shared experience. The more robust the connection, the richer the relationship likely is in social capital. But without that connection, social capital doesn’t exist.

For example, you might have a thousand friends on Facebook or followers on Instagram, but would any of them show up to help you through a crisis or to help you move? Maybe. But unless you’ve invested in building some real connection in that relationship, probably not. Social capital is what differentiates the kind of relationships that help you survive and thrive in times like these.

Here’s the catch that Wayne Baker highlights in his book: Social capital is an outcome. It’s not something you can grab or create directly. It’s like happiness in this way. Happiness is something we value and desire, but we can’t buy or create happiness directly. It’s a by-product of doing things that make us happy.

Social capital, according to Baker, is the by-product of participating in meaningful activity with others.

Social capital is the by-product of participating in meaningful activity with others.

This insight rang true for us at the time, and I’ve seen it work over and over for the past decade since. When we come together with others to do something we mutually care about, relationships naturally form.

If you’ve ever volunteered or served on a board or committee, you have experienced this. As you do the work, you come to know the other people through their work and commitment. You spend time with them and create a shared bond, often before you even know much else about one another. These shared experiences and mutual interests bond you together and create a strong connection.

The same thing can happen with a variety of types of meaningful activity from working together on a project at work to coaching your kids’ sports teams. Shared participation in meaningful activity is one of the most powerful ways we have to cultivate connection that will not only help get us through the pandemic but will last far into the future.

How Can We Use Meaningful Activity to Help in Keeping Employees Connected?

As we think about how to keep our employees connected in this more distributed working world, the magic ingredient is to add meaningful activity to social interactions whenever and wherever you can. Instead of just trying to create more opportunities for people to gather virtually, create ways for them to gather with purpose.

The more that purpose is connected to an outcome or to making meaningful progress toward a shared goal, the better.

To get your wheels turning, below are a few examples to consider.

Life-Hacking Groups

Many people are struggling with how to work most effectively from home. Some are wrestling with their health while others are struggling with focus. Some are having relationship challenges while others are trying to balance parenting with working. Each of these people is likely struggling to figure things out on their own, searching for helpful resources, and experimenting to see what works.

You could create some groups around these issues where employees could meet to discuss their common challenges and what they are finding most helpful. Perhaps you ask or challenge them to capture the best three to five ideas from each discussion to be written up and shared on the company intranet with all employees.

Creating groups around specific issues employees are experiencing can help them figure out what works.

Problem-Solving Teams

If yours is an organization where work has been disrupted in a way that leaves people with some slack time in their schedule, consider applying that time toward tackling organizational challenges. Look at the issues that are known problems but which never get addressed because of a lack of time and resources. If you aren’t sure what they are, send out a short survey to employees or just start asking questions. Soon you’ll have a bigger list than you can tackle.

Prioritize the problems and ask employees to volunteer to be part of a temporary team to discuss, research, and propose solutions to these problems. Employees of all levels can both find and add great value in a process like this. This approach likely requires some facilitation to ensure that the group is focused and that everyone has the chance to participate. You need to be committed to taking some action as a result of the recommendations. If there’s limited budget or resources, ensure they know that upfront so they can use that in their process.

Shark Tank-Style Innovation Challenges

Much like the previous suggestion, if there’s slack time to be used, put it to use finding and pitching new products or services. Employees closest to the customer often have a clearer sense of their needs than anyone and are passionate about solving for them. Give these employees the freedom to explore and propose solutions. By having them pitch the solutions at the end creates a competitive energy that will bond the teams together.

Peer Coaching/Mentoring

The idea of peer coaching and mentoring might be a new one to you; it’s an idea that is relatively new to me. But it seems like an idea that is ideal for this time where people crave both connection and support. In short, the idea is that two coworkers are paired together and asked to complete a series of conversations together. Each person asks the other a series of questions, documents what they hear, and feeds that back to them with some thoughts or suggestions. Then, they switch roles and do the same thing over again.

I came to learn about this approach through my colleague, Aaron Hurst, who’s company Imperative provides a platform to facilitate peer coaching. With or without his tool to help, the process is one that is rich in meaningful activity. The peer coaching process fuels the need for connection, learning, and problem-solving. You could use a simple version of this to facilitate weekly one on one chats for those on your team. All people need is the questions, some basic instructions, and the time to do it.

You can read more about peer coaching here.

Sharing Meaningful Activity Is the Key to Building Connection

My focus right now is to find and highlight the opportunities within the chaos that has been created over the past few months. One of those is that our collective desire for connection has never been more pressing or urgent. If we meet that need with the right kind of opportunities, those fueled by meaningful activity, the connection created in your team and organization will build a foundation that will impact your organization positively for years to come.

 

If you’d like more content like this to arrive in your email box weekly, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking here.

 

Sign up for our free video series Igniting Employee Engagement. Make impact in your organization with fresh insights from more than 25 thought leaders and experts that you won’t hear anywhere else.

Employee Engagement for You: The Latest News April 2020
 Employee Engagement for You: The Latest News April 2020 150 150 Jason Lauritsen
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EmployeeEngagement For You

It feels like the world has been turned upside down in the last few months.

As we try to adjust to our new realities, riding the daily emotional rollercoaster that is life right now, it can be hard to stay grounded.

In the midst of all of this, there are two things I try to stay focused on.

First is self-care. Now more than ever, we need to take care of ourselves. Get some sleep. Exercise. Journal, meditate, talk to people you love—whatever makes you feel less out of control. It’s hard to care for others if we are a hot mess ourselves.

Second, move toward something positive. Throughout my entire life, one thing that has always proven true is that the best way to free myself from fear or a feeling of being trapped was to take action. Even a tiny step forward can feel like liberation.

If your circumstances are feeling daunting or overwhelming, if you feel stuck in fear, find some small thing you can do that moves you towards something better.

Action is a cure to fear. Keep moving.

Jason

P.S. If your organization is taking good care of people, you should nominate your work for an Employee Engagement Award before May 22. It’s a simple process and great recognition. Click here to learn more.

Stuff You Should Read

We are all feeling unsettled and unsure right now. Our sense of safety and normalcy has been lost. Lives and jobs have been lost. And we fear losing so much more. With loss, comes grief. Read: That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

As the new reality of remote working evolves, we need to keep our eye on mental health. Even before these unprecedented times, “Freelancers were 86 percent more likely than office workers to self-report depression.” Read: The Coming Mental Health Crisis as Remote Working Surges

Crisis can reveal the best in us. And it has in many communities around the globe as neighbors reach out to support each other. Will we carry this renewed sense of community forward with us at home and work? Read: Coronavirus Reminds Us What Functioning Communities Look Like

stuff you should hear

If you aren’t familiar with Esther Perel, that should work is a relationshipchange today. She is a renowned relationship expert who has been turning her attention to the workplace. She recently appeared on Adam Grant’s podcast “WorkLife” to discuss relationships and work. Listen now.

stuff you should watch

We’ve seen some really great and really poor examples of leadership recently in business, politics, and elsewhere. This powerful TED video from Simon Sinek helps explain the difference between good and bad leadership. It feels particularly relevant right now.

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Jason Lauritsen