Few things are more precious than a great workplace culture. Studies show that many employees—especially millennials—will actually settle for lower pay if it means working within a better, more positive culture. And as such, it’s no surprise to see so many companies boasting of their cultural excellence.

But let’s be real: Not every workplace culture is ideal. A few are actually downright toxic—and it’s important to know and be aware of that. Before taking a new position, make sure you’re not stepping into an unpleasant cultural situation; and if you already work in a bad culture, do your part to change it.

It all starts with a simple diagnosis. Here are some of my recommendations.

First, It’s Not About Surface-Level Stuff

As a leadership coach, I’ve been in businesses that have ping-pong tables, massage chairs, smoothie makers, and all kinds of other goodies. All of that’s fine, and in fact it can be meaningful—but ultimately, it doesn’t say much about the underlying culture.

Those things are all superficial trappings. If it was that easy to make your culture great, every business would have great culture. Be ready to look past these surface features.

Your Senses Can Guide You

Instead of focusing on the outward trappings, pause to consider the workplace more deeply. Start by surveying the layout. Does it feel open and collaborative—or is everyone’s workspace sequestered and secretive? That tells you a lot about the workplace culture right there.

Also, keep your ears open. How do people sound? Do the employees strike you as enthusiastic? As positive? Or as jittery and nervous? This, too, can be pretty revealing.

What About Recruiting?

Another tip: Be mindful of the recruiting process. How is it paced? A good company culture will manifest itself in plenty of due diligence, ensuring that the person hired is the right fit. Meanwhile, if there is no due diligence—and if the entire process feels rushed and reckless—that’s a pretty big red flag.

Of course, these are just a few ways you can sort through a company culture and try to make sense of it. Even more important is your willingness to ask legitimately tough questions about the company’s values, and how those values are carried out in the day-to-day. Most important of all: Trusting your own gut, and steering clear of any culture that just feels off.

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In an effort to pad their culture and motivate employees, many companies spring for superficial trappings—ping-pong tables, casual Fridays, fridges stocked with exciting snacks. These things are fine, but their appeal is fleeting. Once the novelty wears off, their motivational power is diminished.

But what if I told you there was a motivational technique that offers much more lasting value? What I’m talking about is philanthropy—or, if you rather, corporate social responsibility. Align your company with a cause. Allow your employees to feel like they are adding value to the world; that they—and your company—are part of something bigger, and something good.

This sense of mission, of doing good in the world, can keep employees engaged with their work and optimistic about the impact they are making. That’s what makes it such a valuable addition to your company culture.

In fact, we can break it down further still. Three specific reasons to adopt a culture of philanthropy include:

1. It leads to happiness. There’s something to be said for a happy employee base! Philanthropic giving stimulates the brain and causes the release of endorphins, so there is true, physiological happiness generated here—and that, in turn, leads to lower turnover and higher productivity.
2. It allows your team to bond. A culture of philanthropy fosters a sense of camaraderie; everyone is working together and has a common objective, which can increase your team’s sense of cohesion. This impacts all levels of your business.
3. It’s fulfilling. Your employees may not feel totally, inwardly satisfied by meeting big sales goals—at least, not forever. But active kindness and compassion can go a long way toward boosting that sense of fulfillment—and again, the result is lower turnover, higher workplace satisfaction.

As we enter the holidays, there is no better time to embrace a spirit of giving. The effects on your culture can be incredible.

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Do your employees show up to work each day engaged with your mission, and ready to do their best work to advance the company’s goals? Or are they just there for a paycheck?

Far too often, team members fall into the latter camp—and of course, that means they’re not engaged. Boosting employee engagement is a main focus for many team leaders, and there are a lot of schools of thought about how best to go about it.

Employee Engagement and Emotions

Today I want to propose something simple: To engage your employees in a meaningful way, it’s wise to think in terms of emotions. As an employer, you have to ask yourself: What are the emotional drivers for employee engagement?

What am I talking about? Simply that employee engagement is often rooted in feelings—feelings of being appreciated, of being wanted, of doing something meaningful, and of being part of something bigger.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a quick guide to emotional thinking as it relates to employee engagement.

Emotional Drivers

Your employees want to feel proud.

One of the big emotional drivers is a sense of pride; your employees want to feel like they are doing good, high-quality work that matters. They want to feel like they can go home and brag about the good things they accomplished during their work day. Does your organization promote this sense of pride? Are you giving your people meaningful work to do, and clearly showing the difference it makes?

Your employees want to feel recognized.

Your employees want their good work to be noticed, and their efforts to be appreciated. Do you make a point of praising good work? Of saying thank you to your employees? Of passing along positive feedback from clients and customers?

Your employees want to feel like they are growing and improving.

Your team members also want to feel like they have opportunities for professional development—that the time spent at your company is sharpening them, not making them go stagnant. What kinds of professional development opportunities are you offering to your employees?

Your employees want to feel heard.

A final emotional driver for employee engagement: Your team members want to have voices of their own. Do you welcome their feedback? Do you involve them in decision-making? Do they feel like what they say is heard and taken seriously?

Master Emotional Thinking

When you think in terms of how your employees feel—and, how they want to feel—you can start to think more specifically about employee engagement. To learn more, I encourage you to reach out to me. I’m always happy to talk about emotional thinking with leaders and executives!

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There’s nothing in your company culture that doesn’t have an impact on employee engagement. Every ritual, every rule, every practice affects employee engagement in some way—whether for good or for ill. As such, even team leaders who have the best intentions can inadvertently undercut their own attempts to keep employees motivated. Here are three of the most common forms of self-sabotage.

Micromanaging Your Employees

Your hired your team members for a reason—ostensibly because you believe in them, and trust them to do a good job.

Your employees need to be reminded of this. They need to have you affirm it to them, both in word and in action. But when you delegate something to them and then lean over their shoulder, not allowing them the freedom to accomplish anything on their own terms, you undermine that message. In doing so, you can sabotage employee confidence.

Simply put: You have to trust your people. And if you don’t, you shouldn’t have hired them in the first place.

Blaming Your Employees

Everyone makes mistakes. In fact, that’s one of the main ways in which we grow. But if you jump on your employees for every little error, casting blame rather than offering support, you suppress that growth potential.

There is a time and a place for constructive criticism—but if blame is all you offer, don’t be shocked when employee engagement tanks.

Not Giving Your Employees Enough Credit

Your team should rise and fall together; you share victories as well as defeats. And if the team accomplishes something, everyone should feel good about it.

Don’t take all the credit for yourself. Don’t deprive your employees of the affirmation they deserve after a job well done. Make sure everyone feels included in your company’s broader sense of mission—and in the achievement of key objectives.

Are You Blowing it with Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement should emanate from all corners of your company—and that starts by recognizing the areas where you’re coming up short. If you’re aware of these problems in your company, take action against them today!

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Great leaders go to astonishing lengths to be the best they can be—to perform at the highest possible level every day. It’s not enough to make your company a success, though. You can’t do it alone. You need an entire team that’s similarly committed to peak performance. And one of your jobs as the leader is to try to get the very best work out of them—as individuals, and as a team.

Here are four ways to show this kind of effective team leadership.

Focus on the Positive

I’m not suggesting you bury your head in the sand and ignore the real problems that pop up. What I’m suggesting is that a positive attitude, even in the face of hardship, is energizing and contagious.

Always be gracious with your employees. Express your gratitude to them. Celebrate wins—and when problems arise, focus on positive solutions, rather than wallowing in pessimism. Make positivity in the workplace a priority!

Share Your Passion

Allow your employees to see the things that matter to you—the things you really care about. Be candid about your goals—personal, professionally—as well as the things that inspire you.

And make it a two-way street! Ask direct reports about their own goals, and try to tap into their own passions and enthusiasms.

Provide Learning Opportunities

Make it clear that you want your people to grow and develop—and make sure to offer them chances to broaden their horizons and deepen their skillsets.

Have team meetings where you brainstorm together and learn from one another. Also consider bringing in outside speakers to motivate your team.

Believe in Your Team

A final suggestion: Show your team members that you trust them. Provide them with real responsibilities, and the resources they need to complete their work. Don’t breathe down their necks or micromanage.

In short: Make it clear to them that you have every confidence in them; it’s why you hired them in the first place!

Help Everyone Be Their Best

Hopefully this helps you know how to get the best out of your employees. Keep working to be the best version of you—but don’t forget: part of that means inspiring those around you to do likewise.

I’d love to play a role in inspiring your team—and as an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, I’ve got plenty of experience to draw on! Reach out to me to learn more about my motivational speaking work: You can contact me at www.rickgoodman.com or call 888-267-6098. Call today to learn more about employee motivation!

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Study after study confirms that, when it comes to employee engagement, one of the critical factors is development. Employees need to feel like they have opportunities to grow, to broaden their horizons, to deepen their skillsets.

To keep your employees engaged, offering these growth opportunities is absolutely essential—and here’s why.

When there’s no room for growth, employees feel stagnant.

There is a real historic record for this. In 2010, surveys found that employee perception of company-sponsored growth opportunities was at an all-time low, across the board. And that makes sense, given the high unemployment rate and the fact that many company training programs were being done away with. Opportunities for promotion, meanwhile, were dwindling.

As a result, employee engagement numbers also plummeted. Employees across the country felt like they didn’t really have any way to move onward and upward—and their passion for work dropped because of it.

Growth opportunities help everyone.

By contrast, recent years have seen more and more companies offering their employees chances to grow—educational opportunities as well as wider on-the-job experience. It’s not surprising that this motivates employees, especially younger ones, who value career development more than any other workplace benefits—including salary!

But growth opportunities aren’t only good for the employees. They’re also key for the company. They enhance the employer brand, by revealing that you really care about supporting your people in the long-term. When it comes to recruiting top talents, this is exceedingly beneficial.

You can make an investment in your team members.

Ultimately, growth opportunities—whether training or promotions, or simply more delegated responsibilities—show that you believe in the employee, and have confidence in their ability to thrive. Make your employees see that they are your most important assets.

Growth is a powerful way to accomplish all of that—and I’d love to show you how. Contact me today to learn more about my team training programs, and how they might boost your employee engagement!

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Sometimes it’s helpful to step back and look at the big picture. That’s certainly true where employee engagement is concerned. As you think about your company’s own engagement standards—and think of ways to improve them—why not pause to consider what employee engagement looks like overall?

Here are a few significant trends that I’ve found to be noteworthy—the big picture of employee engagement.

Employee Engagement is Getting Better—Slowly but Surely

We’ll start with some happy news: According to the most recent Gallup data on employee engagement, about 33 percent of the workforce is engaged. That probably sounds like a low number. Actually, it’s a big improvement over the past few years.

What this says to me is that it’s capable for organizations to learn, to evolve, to improve—in short, to better accommodate people. As awareness about employee engagement has grown, companies have stepped up to change things. And they’re making progress, slowly but surely.

Technology Plays a Big Role

I can tell you anecdotally that a number of the businesses I’ve consulted with now implement HR software to quantify and track employee engagement—including surveys, 360-degree feedback programs, and more.

And indeed, a number of big companies—including Microsoft and GE—have adopted similar technologies for aiding employee engagement.

The bottom line? If you’re ready to get serious about engaging your employees, there are tools available to help you automate, streamline, and measure your efforts.

Flexibility is a Hot Commodity

An important question to ask: How can employers increase their engagement numbers? One important employee engagement trend is flexibility. It costs businesses nothing—or very little—yet many employees say it’s a top factor in their own workplace engagement.

What am I talking about when I mention flexibility? Work-from-home opportunities, flex time, and paid family leave are just some of the factors you might consider here.

Analytics are the Future

One final employee engagement trend to note: HR departments that invest in data and analytics are really reaping some rewards. In fact, the right data can help you identify key trends in productivity, performance, retention, and even reasons why employee leave.

All of this can be useful as you seek ways to improve your workplace experience, and ultimately boost engagement.

These are just some of the 2017 employee engagement trends I’ve noticed. Consider what they might mean for your business, and what opportunities they suggest for keeping your own team more engaged!

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Communication impacts everything—how well your team members work together, how much they accomplish, how engaged they are, and on down the list. In a word, communication shapes your culture—so whether you’re looking to overhaul your company culture or simply improve what you already have in place, it’s never a bad time to review your workplace communication practices.

Here are a few recommendations for more effective communication.

Set the Standards

First things first: There should never be any question at your company about what is and isn’t appropriate workplace communication.

Joking around, informality, casual banter—if there are things that cross a line, that needs to be clearly set out in an employee handbook.

Don’t let there be any murky gray area about what’s accepted in terms of workplace communication.

Clarify the Terminology

Do you prefer the term clients, or customers? How about guests?

And are your team members employees—or would you rather them think of themselves as associates?

Once again, the employee handbook is an ideal place to clearly spell out the preferred terms you want to use in shaping your workplace communication.

Focus on Clarity

Defined terminology is one thing, but jargon is quite another.

In fact, overly technical language can impede your clarity and leave people confused—and that’s the enemy of clear workplace communication.

Keep your company culture as free of jargon as you can. Review your own communication habits for any vague buzzwords, and remove them from your internal communications.

Use Technology Intentionally

Want to adopt Skype, Slack, or some other instant messaging program within your office?

By all means, do so—just be clear about why you’re doing it, and how those tools are meant to be used.

Make sure technology has a clearly defined role within your company culture.

Go Beyond Words

Finally, remember that communication isn’t just about the words you write or speak. Body language and tone of voice can also convey deep meaning.

Be mindful of this, and think about ways in which you might need to modify your own approach to communication. Remember: As the leader, you set the tone.

Remember that successful companies have strong communication. I’d love to talk with you more about how you can improve your own workplace communication—and thus, your company culture. Reach out to me directly to start that conversation!

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Every company has its own internal culture—whether you’re shaping it intentionally or allowing it to happen by accident. And when you take a proactive approach, you can actually turn your company culture into a competitive advantage.

Culture Helps with Recruiting

For an example, look no further than to recruiting.

You obviously want to bring on board top talents, but most of the top talents are probably employed already—which means it will take more than a simplistic job listing to get them on your team.

A well-defined culture—one with a strong sense of purpose and of value—can often be just the thing to entice great employees to consider switching teams. This is especially true of younger employees, for whom culture is a huge factor in all career decisions.

Culture Helps with Engagement

Once you recruit top talents, you need to keep them all productive, working toward the same goals. Culture helps here, too.

Remember that culture is not just about snack machines and air hockey tables. It’s about the values and objectives that your team has codified and embraced together.

Even on days where the work itself may not be as exciting, that broader sense of purpose—of belonging to something bigger—can go a long way.

Culture is a Promise to Your Customers

Culture isn’t just something that impacts your employees. It affects customers, too—and when you have a clearly defined sense of culture, it tells your customers what they can expect.

Maybe your culture is one of transparency; of service; of quality. Maybe it’s all of the above. The important thing is that you view your culture as part of the value proposition you offer your customers. Let them know what they can expect from you, and deliver on it.

Turning Your Culture into an Asset

The million-dollar question is, how do you turn your company culture into an asset in this way? That’s something I’d love to discuss with you. Reach out and ask me about culture-building and coaching today!

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Employee engagement matters, and there are many factors that can drive it—or, conversely, diminish it. One of the primary ones is leadership. Simply put, the person you work for—your boss, manager, or team leader—can actively promote or diminish the enthusiasm you feel for your work.

This has some obvious implications for leaders, yet it also raises an interesting question for employees—to wit: If you’re not engaged with your work, should you say something to the person in charge?

Speaking Up About Employee Engagement

Unfortunately, this may be one of those scenarios where neither option is a good one. When you speak up and say something about your lack of engagement, it can certainly lead to some awkward moments. On the other hand, if you don’t say anything, nothing will change—and that’s probably even worse. It means you’ll be unengaged; your boss’ leadership style will continue to fall short; and the whole team might ultimately suffer.

One thing to keep in mind is that most leaders aren’t aware that they have an unengaging leadership style—and as such, open and honest feedback may help them to see some areas of improvement they’d otherwise miss.

Yes, it might be a challenging thing to bring up—but in the end, it can benefit everyone.

Talking to Your Boss About Employee Engagement

So how can you address the issue? Here are a few suggestions:

Ask your boss to help you meet your full potential. It’s important to phrase it this way because it reminds your boss that this isn’t just a matter of your personal feelings; it has a real, bottom-line effect on productivity and ROI.

Request a new challenge. Make it clear to your boss that you’re not looking for a pep rally; you’re looking to be stretched. Just don’t ask unless you’re ready to tackle a big new project, because that may be what you get!

Ask your boss to explain how your role fits in with the big picture. Sometimes, what matters most is just being reminded of the mission.

Tell your boss that your work is exhausting. Your employer cannot reasonably expect you to maintain self-motivation at all times; sometimes the leader needs to step in and help push people forward.

Diversity makes your team stronger—yet it can also present its own set of challenges.

Generational diversity is especially difficult to manage. While there are limitations to the sweeping statements and broad inferences to be made about Boomers, Gen Xers, etc., the simple truth is that people from different generations can bring different motivators and different assumptions to the workplace.

And as a leader, you have to juggle all of those things, all while keeping your entire team on the same page, aligned with the same sense of mission.

So what can you do to navigate these challenges? Here are some tips on motivating multi-generational workforces.

Offer Affirmations—Regularly

There’s a lot of talk about how millennials like to receive recognition. Honestly, I think that’s baloney. Everyone likes to be recognized for good work—regardless of the generation they hail from.

Develop a rhythm of praising people when they do good work. Keep it simple: When somebody gets a glowing customer review, or completes a big assignment, offer them kudos. Don’t wait until annual review season to give a few pats on the back. Offer a simple expression of praise whenever it’s called for.

Focus on Transparency

A big part of motivating employees of different ages is just to keep them all on the same page. That means being transparent about your team’s mission—and the hurdles it faces.

Communicate the big-picture mission statement for your company, as well as long-term and short-term goals. Also reveal the current challenges you see before you. Get the full team to weigh in on possible ways forward. Make sure everyone has a sense of what’s going on, and make sure everyone has a voice.

Provide Learning Opportunities

Everyone likes to be affirmed. Everyone benefits from transparency. And—finally—everyone, regardless of age, wants to learn more.

Learning and career development remain two of the strongest sources of workplace motivation. Make sure you offer them across the board—through mentorships, through hands-on learning opportunities, and through classes or seminars.

Invite everyone on your team to broaden their horizons. They’re never too young—or too old.

Motivating Team Members from Different Generations

There are always going to be hiccups as you try to engage team members from different backgrounds and perspectives—but these basic tenets can help unify your efforts.

Effective communication isn’t just about your vocabulary choices, nor even your tone of voice. In fact, communicating effectively is as much about your body language as it is your speech. For leaders, this always presents a prime opportunity for growth: You may never have thought much about things like posture and assertive eye contact, but greater awareness of these things helps you get your point across—using every tool at your disposal.

Effective Communication: It Starts with the Eyes

I mentioned assertive eye contact, so let’s start there.

Your parents probably taught you to look people in the eye when speaking with them. There are a few reasons for this. One, it’s just polite. It shows the person that they have your attention. But two, it projects your confidence.

That makes direct eye contact especially important in certain situations, like when you’re giving directions or conveying information—basically, any time you want to come across authoritatively.

(PS—It’s okay if you have to break eye contact for a few seconds, here and there; you’re not trying to win a staring contest. Just remain engaged—and communicate it through your eyes.)

One more thing: If eye contact shows confidence, what does it convey when you roll your eyes? Frankly, it suggests that you’re untrustworthy. Avoid the eye rolls!

Posture as a Form of Effective Communication

Posture, too, is important for what it communicates—what it allows you to say without actually opening your mouth.

A strong posture is always recommended; stand up straight, and don’t slouch. With that said, you don’t have to look like you’re standing at military attention. In fact, having a relaxed posture, with your shoulders back, makes you look open and trustworthy.

In other words, it makes you look like someone who’s ready to brainstorm, collaborate, and get things accomplished—as part of a team.

As with eye contact, though, there’s an inverse rule: If an open posture helps you come across as approachable, folding your arms accomplishes the opposite. And generally speaking, that’s not what you want!

The Importance of Body Language in the Workplace

Whether you’re aware of it or not, the people you work with will pick up on the things your body language is saying. Make sure you keep these nonverbal communication cues in mind—and work on using them to your full advantage!

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The New Year is a new opportunity—a chance to do better, to be better. One area where all businesses could stand to be better? Employee engagement.

The good news is, there are a number of avenues for improvement here. What follows are just a few resolutions I’d recommend as far as employee engagement goes. See if any of these line up with your own engagement goals!

Start by Making Sure You Have Employee Engagement Goals

If you can’t articulate your employee engagement goals—if you don’t have specific and measurable things you’d like to accomplish—then that’s step one.

Identify the things you’d like to accomplish in terms of your employee engagement. Pick goals that are challenging, but attainable. And make sure you define how you’ll know when you’ve reached your goal. What does success look like to you?

Identify Your Biggest Employee Engagement Obstacles

What’s standing in your way? What are the hurdles you must clear? What are the problems you must solve?

Articulating your obstacles is just as important as articulating your goals. After all, awareness of challenges is the first step toward solving them.

Conduct More Interviews

Once you have a clear sense of what you wish to achieve, it’s helpful to get input from your employees.

Surveys and interviews are invaluable here. A lot of companies are good about doing exit interviews. What you need is to start doing stay interviews. Check in with the people who work at your business, and get their feedback on engagement issues.

Push Your Perks

There are doubtless some perks to working at your company—but do your employees actually use them? Are they even fully aware of them?

This year, resolve to push them more. Talk up the benefits. Educate employees about why they should use these perks.

Identify the Disengaged

Here’s a tough one. If you really want a challenge this year, make it a priority to locate the team members who are actively disengaged. These are the dangerous employees, because their lack of engagement can spread to others.

Don’t make it into a witch hunt; just find the people who need help, and see what you can do to bring them on board. Make it clear that you just want to understand them. What’s the source of their resentment? And how can you make things better for them?

Resolve to Do Better with Employee Engagement

These are just a few ways in which you can resolve to engage your employees more effectively in the new year.

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Chances are, there are millennials in your office—and if not, there will be. It’s a rapidly growing workplace demographic, and as such, it’s important for leaders to consider the ways to get the best out of their millennial-age employees.

There are a lot of great things about this generation, which consistently proves itself to be driven, entrepreneurial, and mission-minded. Even so, managing the members of any generation can require a change in mindset and approach. It’s also necessary to avoid common pitfalls and errors—like these.

Common Pitfalls in Managing Millennials

Not Understanding What Motivates Millennials

While everyone likes to receive recognition for their hard work, that’s not the primary driver for millennials. Actually, employee engagement surveys find that millennials are motivated by two things, primarily—making a difference in the world, and finding opportunities for professional development.

Are you showing your employees how their work connects to some broader sense of mission? And do you provide a path forward for your younger team members? Both are necessary steps for keeping millennials engaged!

Being Impersonal in Your Feedback

Too many leaders provide millennial employees with cursory or generic feedback, when what they often crave is something a little more individualized.

Remember, millennials are looking for opportunities for professional development—and employee engagement surveys show that they respond best to personal feedback from a mentor or leader.

Underinvesting in Education and Training

Along the same lines: Your millennial employees want to learn. They want to grow. It’s up to you to give them the opportunities to do so.

Make training, learning, and ongoing education keys to your company culture. That’s a clear sign that you’re invested in the future of your employees, not just what they can do for you right this second.

Assuming Millennials are Too Tech Focused

There’s a common knock against millennials, that all they want to do is play on their phones all the time.

Actually, millennials technology use isn’t just about play. They’re uniquely suited to show you how technology can be used for work purposes—even improving some of your company’s internal processes. Use that to your advantage, rather than laughing it off.

One More Thing…

Of course, there’s one final mistake to note—and that’s assuming all millennials are exactly the same! Everything we might say about them is, of course, a generalization. As a leader, it’s up to you to get to know them as people, not just as a generation.

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All businesses strive to engage their employees—but some face particular challenges. For smaller companies, where budgets are more restrictive, it can be tough to know just what you can do to keep your workforce committed and motivated.

But you don’t have to have big-company resources to keep your team members engaged. Here are a few employee engagement methods that can work well even in the smallest of businesses.

Customize Your Incentives

Your company benefits package might include any number of incentives—but it’s important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here.

Instead of spending money on standard incentives that only some of your employees want, provide some custom options.

Maybe your older employees are more interested in enhanced healthcare benefits, while younger ones find greater appeal in travel opportunities, gift cards, or educational opportunities.

Incentives work best—and offer the most bang for buck—when you tailor them to your employees. That’s something any company can do, including the small company or the growing company.

Give Your Employees a Voice

Another way to boost employee engagement: Help your team members to feel like they truly have a voice within your company.

Make sure to hold brainstorming sessions where all ideas are respected. Provide different channels for employees to provide their feedback.

This doesn’t mean you have to act on every single idea that comes your way; just listen and make sure your employees know that you value their perspective.

Create a Sense of Mission

Here’s a way to boost engagement without spending a dime: Help your employees to understand that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

Articulate your company’s mission and its short- and long-term objectives. Get buy-in from your team members, and ask for their feedback. Most importantly, clarify the ways in which each employee in each role contributes to the big picture.

Bottom line: Show your team members that what they do matters very much to the big picture.

Boosting Engagement—Even in a Small Business

No matter the size of your company, it’s important to engage your employees—and with these tips, you can make progress, even if your company is a small one.

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What motivates your employees? What makes them happy? What helps them to feel like you’ve invested in them? There are a few possible answers to that question, but here’s a big one: Education.

Simply put: Your employees want to grow. They want opportunities for personal betterment and professional development. And if you provide it to them, it lets them know you’re not just interested in what they can do for you right now. You’re invested in them over the long haul.

Just one problem: Education is expensive… right? Not necessarily. There are some good employee training options that can improve engagement without causing you to go broke!

Curate Content

One low budget career training option? Curate some good, high-quality information for your team members.

Thanks to the Internet, your employees have a world of information at their fingertips—but how do they find the stuff that’s really good, really relevant to their work?

That’s where you come in. A learning management system (LMS) will allow you to handpick some training materials—and yes, there’s a bit of a cost up front, but it can pay off in the long run.

In lieu of that, you can simply spend time scouting out pertinent articles, TED Talks, and other online resources, then encouraging your team to engage with them.

Just Listen

Another affordable option for employee training: Go on a listening tour.

Schedule some structured meetings with your employees and ask them about what they find fulfilling in their work, what challenges they face, and what their goals are.

This can provide you with some insight into the areas where training and development opportunities are most desired—and you can map out a plan to make good, judicious use of your resources, bringing in the speakers or curricula that your employees really want.

Find Your Evangelists

One more option for effective and affordable employee training: Locate the educational evangelists you already have on your team.

Recruit the people who are most passionate about training and development to help you put together some new opportunities—and perhaps even to lead these training sessions themselves.

These are just a few basic options for making employee training a priority in your business—without busting your budget.

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Company culture is often discussed in esoteric terms; most business owners will agree that culture matters, but only in nebulous and unquantifiable ways. It’s a great idea more than it is a prized commodity.

The truth is that company culture has a real, physical impact on your company’s bottom line—period. It can move the sales needle. It can increase the value you get from each employee. It can improve your margins and help your company grow.

Don’t believe me? Let me list just a few of the pragmatic ways in which company culture lends value.

How Company Culture Brings Value

It results in lower employee absenteeism. Let’s be real: When employees take sick days, it’s not always because they’re under the weather. Sometimes, they’re just not willing to come into the office. But what if you had a culture that made people excited to come to work each day? How much more could your team accomplish?

It decreases turnover. Culture is one of the big factors that employees use as they determine whether they wish to stay at your business or head for greener pastures. Bad culture means more turnover—and finding and hiring new team members can be costly. Culture helps you avoid that big expense.

It helps with recruiting. Along the same lines, a strong culture can be awfully attractive to new hires. If you want to bring in top talents—industry experts and rising stars who will really bring value to your team—culture is a good starting point.

It frees up your time. A positive culture encourages employees to work independently, to problem solve, and to take initiative. The result? Leaders and managers have less hand-holding to do, and can spend more of their time adding real value to the business.

It lends itself to continuous improvement. Finally, be aware that a strong company culture is one that’s always looking toward process improvements—meaning that, when you invest in culture, you invest in always making things more productive and more efficient. That can pay off in huge and surprising ways!

The Importance of Company Culture

Culture isn’t just a buzzword. It’s real, bottom-line value that you can inject into your company. Start harnessing the power of culture today.

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Employee recognition is one of the keys to keeping your team members motivated. When employees do good work, they want to feel their boss sees it and appreciates it; recognition, whether through words of affirmation or through bonuses and incentives, can truly boost morale.

Then again, it can also lead to problems—that is, if there is any perception of favoritism. The question is, how can you pursue employee recognition without leading to hurt feelings or jealous notions?

Here are a few tips you can use in your own employee recognition efforts.

Employee Recognition Ideas

Do it privately. Hoisting a big Employee of the Month trophy in front of the whole office can naturally lead to some resentment; by contrast, offering recognition privately can be more personal and meaningful to the employee in question, while helping you avoid any signs of favoritism or unfairness.

Plan an activity. One way to offer employee recognition? Plan a dinner, a party, or some other social gathering—and make it accessible to any employee who performs above a certain level.

Recognize the top 10 percent. Another approach you might take: Once a year, pause to recognize the top 10 percent, performance-wise, of your employee base. Make sure there is a clear, black-and-white metric by which you’re assessing performance, and that your employees all know what it is. Personalize rewards, but ensure they are all equal in value.

Be clear about expectations. If your company does end-of-year bonuses, or other forms of recognition, make sure you explain how those bonuses are earned. Set the expectations early—during the hiring and onboarding processes, even.

Motivational Techniques for Your Employees

The bottom line? You can’t forsake employee recognition. Neither should you do it without concern for fairness. Make sure you have an employee recognition system in place that’s honest, transparent, and meaningful.

I’d love to talk with you more about how you can keep your team members engaged. To learn more, reach out to me as soon as possible!

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Human beings are complicated—and motivating them can be complex. When it comes to motivating your employees, there’s no one tactic that guarantees results. Instead, leaders must take a more holistic view, one that encompasses several different motivating factors. Here are five that I’d recommend for any employee motivation plan.

Support

First, it’s important that employees see you as a supportive leader. Notice that I didn’t say micromanager, or overbearing. What I mean is that, when employees need resources, or they run into a problem they can’t wrap their head around, they should feel comfortable coming to you. They should always know that you’re invested in them, and that a big part of your job is setting them up for wins.

Empowerment

Along similar lines, it’s important that your employees feel empowered. This means entrusting them to tackle big projects and to assume more and more responsibilities over time; and, rather than feeling like you’re peering over their shoulder, employees should feel like you trust them to do the job you hired them for. Finally, employees should feel encouraged to dream bigger, to take initiative, and to think up their own ways to add value to the business.

Positivity

The work environment you create should be a positive one—but what does that mean, exactly? It means giving people room to fail. It means listening more than talking, and taking employee feedback seriously. It means hearing out new ideas without judgement, whether you end up implementing those ideas or not.

Collaboration

Collaboration is another key. Your employees are all part of a team; their role is important in advancing the team’s goals. Make sure they know that, and see how they fit into the big picture. Also make sure you leave them plenty of space to work with their team members, augmenting and enhancing each other’s abilities.

Recognition

Finally, it’s important for employees to feel recognized for their good work. Be generous in thanking your employees, patting them on the back, and even offering incentives and rewards as appropriate.

These are obviously big-picture items, and you’ll need to tailor them to fit within your own day-to-day leadership style. That’s something I can help you with. Reach out to me today, and let’s talk more about steps you can take toward better employee motivation.

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An engaged employee is a satisfied employee—right? Well, not necessarily. Though the terms employee engagement and employee satisfaction are sometimes used interchangeably, the truth is that they have very different meanings.

Defining Employee Engagement

Some quick definitions might be helpful. First, there’s employee engagement. This term describes employees who are committed to helping the business achieve its goals. Those employees who have a high level of engagement will come to work each day ready to do their best work—even going above and beyond the call of duty to help achieve team objectives.

Defining Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction looks a bit different. Employees who are satisfied like coming to work each day, and are generally happy with what they do—but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are good at it. Certainly, there can be a lot of overlap—but an employee who arrives to work late each day, without being penalized, and spends half the day playing games on his phone might be perfectly satisfied, yet clearly not engaged.

Working with the Right Metrics

That last example might be just a little bit extreme, but the point is simply this: It’s possible to have team members who are by no means unhappy with their workplace existence, and whose contributions to your team are pretty minimal. For selfish reasons, these employees are happy—but they do nothing to boost those around them, nor to advance your broader business goals.

There’s a clear implication: Your company may put a lot of effort into making employees happy. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Maintaining high morale is crucial.

Yet, if you believe happy employees are always good employees, you may be missing some key issues with your work force—specifically, employees who are coasting rather than truly engaging.

Beyond Employee Satisfaction

The key difference is this: Employees who are merely satisfied will never go above and beyond for you. The question is, how can you take those merely satisfied employees and move them toward true engagement?

There are many components to this, but one of the big ones is mission. Getting your employees to see that they are part of something bigger—to identify the business’ goals, and their own role in achieving those goals—is key.