Employee Engagement

by Simon Larcombe

the real deal

License Agreement

With one exception, which relates to redistribution, anyone (including any business) may use this presentation for any purpose. You may also edit it, and you can remove all of our branding, and the author’s name.

You are not obliged to give us any attribution.

This extends to you, no matter the nature of your business (e.g. even if you are an Employee Engagement Consultant and even if you want to present to a customer).

Here is the one exception:

We only own the rights to the graphics known as “Picons” -- shown below -- so far as they extend to you. And their license prohibits redistribution beyond the range of yourself or your business’ use. It also restricts you from using these graphics within any other presentation -- although you can modify this one to suit your purpose, including them.

If you would like to purchase these icons, for redistribution or other uses, they are available here: Picons Thin

If you require clarification please write to: info@AlchemyEngagement.com

Introduction

About the Small Grey NotesThis employee engagement presentation is designed for you to present -- so we've tried to avoid making it into a book -- therefore, some slides include notes (the grey text, which you can delete before you present it). These notes are to ensure you are congruent with the ideas.

a Large Number of Slides?Many of these slides are also for your personal understanding, and can be removed before presentation. Depending upon your audience. you may also be able to remove some complete sections, and/or break it down into sections. If you were to present all aspects of employee engagement at once, there would be around 35 slides.

Where the Information Came FromThis is the result of real-world, hands-on experience; within diverse roles, in variously-engaging environments. Including prolonged periods on both ends of the engagement extreme. i.e. highly engaging and then powerfully disengaging (not fun, but useful in hindsight for reflection on the contrast).

8 years’ of reflection & study on the subject of Employee Engagement, ultimately drew parallel conclusions to those which work for the best businesses in the world today. This research was also validated thoroughly against some of the best in the world.

Where there are citations (book and links etc.) this is to help accelerate your understanding, and to provide you with the most relevant and credible support available……. Also – very important – for the purpose of this presentation; honesty and integrity have been taken for granted… Although, in reality you might need additional resource to address that… If you have any questions about that, or anything else, please contact me: simon@AlchemyEngagement.com

Purpose of this Presentation

To illuminate the meaning of employee engagement, a strategy to achieve it, and all the resources one would need to develop a depth of understanding to become comfortabe with presenting it -- including:

•introduction and definition of employee engagement•business and workplace culture•employee engagement culture•employee engagement principles and strategy•the core/essence of employee engagement•timing, and the stages of employee engagement•the business-case for employee engagement•guidance to develop and deepen your understanding•employee engagement resources; such as useful links and further reading

Introduction to Employee Engagementit starts simple -- and gets deeper

Employee Engagement is achieved through relationships, business values and empowerment.

Personal meaning is also equally important, but the way you apply meaning is different, so we come back to this subject later in the presentation… To be able to impart personal meaning, you first need the foundation to achieve that... What this means -- beyond the most basic needs of physical safety and wellbeing i.e. things that enable us to concentrate, and not to worry -- is, most importantly, a sense of morality; which means that your employees believe that you appreciate them, that you grant them autonomy (the ability to do things in their own way), that you authentically listen to what they have to say (which means you invite their opinions and not just physically listen, but act upon things, even if that action is inaction, so long as you explain why, and your reasoning needs genuine reason beyond bias), and that you welcome them into your group (a sense of belonging is also very important), and that you treat them as an equal… To empower meaning pragmatically, it is vital to do so with direction.

Basic-level engagement is about developing authentic, meaningful, emotionally-healthy relationships between team-members and the business.

When we are happily connected we can naturally deliver results -- and we have the potential to become interested in what our employer’s business is doing.

To attain an authentic connection we need to be empowered with autonomy and voice. When we have these we can invest our character into what we do -- we can also attain relative personal-growth effectively.

Edward De Bono takes this idea even further, in his book “Six Thinking Hats”

To add some more meaning -- and a little theatre -- to the presentation. We suggest you might consider embeding this YouTube Video called the Science of Character on this slide. The reason we didn’t add it for you, is because it throws up a security warning if you didn’t do it yourself. The video we’re suggesting here follows-on well from what we’ve covered up to this point, and adds value to the context of what’s to follow. The video was produced by a voluntary employee engagement movement called EngageForSuccess

To do this in PowerPoint 2013 please follow these instructions – for other versions of PowerPoint we will give you links where instructions are available: •On the top menu bar select “Insert. Video, Online Video”

•In the pop-up box that appears, see: “From a Video Embed Code”. Copy & Paste the following text into there:

<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nfBBKi4iW24?autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The video box will now appear and you can resize it according to your taste. This video will play automatically – so make sure you’re ready for it when you present! … If you’d prefer the video not to auto-play, simply remove this section of the text from that embed code: ?autoplay=1

Instructions for other verions: PowerPoint 2010

With more freedom and the flexibility to express ourselves, we begin to develop interest with the potential for exponential growth.

Without direction?

Essential for the most effective employee engagement: We develop a culture steeped in the business’ values and goals. It’s allows us to let go of the reigns a little. And creates the biggest potential for a mutually-rewarding result.

To do this really well, we cannot only rely upon lists on walls, and performance reviews. We need to cover these regularly and in a variety of interesting and fun ways. This is where the most meaningful learning occurs.

We need to explain; the “why” of business values; what contributed towards the reasoning? Also, if we can demonstrate examples of where our values have been used in practice, and were beneficial, or contributed towards success; and cases where they were personally meaningful – also if we have an anecdote about them -- these are all very helpful….it is equally important to explain the opposites e.g. Why we don't do things another way? And, if our values contain restrictive rules, like governance of behaviours, exactly why are those rules in place? What would happen otherwise?

The final trick to this, is to set all this up in fun, interesting, interactive environments; where people can share dialog, and even challenge reasoning. This gives the greatest potential for complete internalisation, which will begin to cultivate the potential to empower people more meaningfully. And -- over time -- support the development of business acumen.

The space for autonomy and voice opens up, and we combine this with facilitation.

Over time, this cultivates better relationships -- along with personal value and meaning -- making us happier and leading to the benefits associated with business-acumen and productivity.

Key Principlesto bear in mind throughout the process

Bear in Mind:

Chemistry

In order to establish genuine and effective relationships it's critical that our strategy is:•meaningful to the workforce•appropriately timed•what’s written on the tin

For example, we need to improve relationships and impart business values etc. before expecting to achieve results in areas such as collaboration. And we need to be careful not to judge activities for their value before we’re looking at a happy, engaged workforce. We also need to take care of our existing workforce before we attempt broadening the scope of employee engagement into activities such as deep-induction for new starters.

Bear in Mind:

Rocket Science

Individual psychology is complex. Culture makes it easy. The quick-path to engaging our workforce -- naturally enabling a sustainable program of mutual-reward.

Clearly, one cannot create culture out of thin air. There are a couple of immediate points to bear in mind 1. it is important not to think about "I need to engage this person, then that person, and the next person" etc. if we tried to achieve that, we’d be opening a can of worms. 2. We’re going to change the way we do things. Let's say, impart the business’ values and grant more autonomy and voice. This alone will not fully-engage the staff. More than that, it is the buzz that it starts to create. The improvements that people start to experience become apparent to one-another. And this feeds back into the day-to-day experience. Then, at some point, the [good, natural, moral] principles of influence -- i.e. reciprocation, consensus/social-proof, liking, authority, consistency -- start to feed into the situation more powerfully. And, it is that -- the snowball-effect -- within the relationships, within the culture (the environment, you could say) feeding into the experience, which is the more powerful engager. “The proof is in the pudding" as they say…. Remembering this will help us not to get tangled up in the details.

Bear in Mind:

Autonomy and Voice

Connection, meaning and personal value; empowered with autonomy and voice. Success is attained with cultural trust, steeped in the business' values and goals. The most effective way to grant meaningful autonomy and voice is to impart the business’ values (and perhaps the business’ goals and vision). This means that each person begins to develop “sensory-perception” of the boundaries of the autonomy that they are granted – business-acumen, if you like -- and can more easily attain business-acumen as a result of the reactions, feedback and appreciation they get towards their work and ideas (especially in the context of being able to reflect on the values). Over time this has a positive and exponential effect -- contributing to the snowball effect which is enhanced by culture.

Bear in Mind:

Facilitation

The magic-ingredient, vital within the best employee engagement program, is facilitation -- day-to-day facilitation of projects, communication, business acumen, teamwork and personal growth.Employee engagement 101 -- and second-only to culture – this is a deeper subject than it might appear on the surface. Get this right and the culture will be further enlightened with this facilitation. Contributing to the snowball effect that we’ve already set in motion with autonomy and business values. Contemplate and brainstorm the idea of managers as facilitators. Think about staffs’ personal-growth and business-acumen. How can a manager recognise and develop each individuals full potential in a personally effective way and in a way which is potentially useful for the business too, even if it doesn’t relate to their immediate role and responsibilities?... Also research managers at Google and Zappos.

Bear in Mind:

Meaning

"all of us want our work to mean something. Work, for most people, is a pretty mediocre experience; and it doesn't have to be" – Laszlo Bock, SVP People Operations at Google.

This is commonly misunderstood... You can't force people to adopt a sense of meaning, for any reason -- not because they chose the job, or because it's their chosen skillset, or for any other reason... At early stages of employee engagement, you also can't focus on personal meaning as a primary ingredient... Personal meaning in business is much like salt and pepper in cooking i.e. you don’t make a great meal out of salt and pepper, but great chefs know that without seasoning food has less taste -- it tends to be dull and plain in comparison. This idea of meaning is very much like that… all of the foundational stuff needs to be in place first, your staff need a sense of morality, of personal worth, they also need the autonomy to express their own personality in what they do, and avenues to be creative, and they need to understand your business values in order to express to their fullest potential... When they've got those things, then you can authentically empower people with meaning, because there is genuinely something to apply meaning to... So, don’t focus on cultivating personal meaning as an initial priority, but rather aspire to apply meaning to the other principles (of culture, business values, trust, autonomy, voice, empowerment, self-actualisation and collaboration etc.) that will ensure you develop the absolute best result… You can empower meaning in people’s mastery, skills, acumen, in them making others happy, in contributing to more dynamic teams – you can probably think of many more ways as it applies to your business, and to this process.

Bear in Mind:

Rewarding

The result is a snowball-effect, a constantly evolving workforce, naturally internalising business-acumen with deep insight: agile, dynamic and adaptable.Remembering this gives us something to aim for, and reminds us what the original purpose of the employee engagement process was. It’s not going to happen overnight – so it’s important to stay focused. For the best businesses in the world, in this area, employee engagement is an everyday investment which pays dividends… Not only that, but it also creates a rewarding, inspiring place for everyone to work. Once the ball’s rolling, you can start to take [more] advantage of this kind of thing: click here to read an article about collective intelligence

Example Processjust add fun

1. Introduction of your employee engagement ideas to the workforce

Building trust is very important. If the staff trust that we are doing something authentic with this, it will speed up the first part of the process. And make for a better experience. Some ideas are: Ask the staff for input. Ask them ‘if they had an advocate, what would they wish that person to communicate and transform?’ Go back to them and tell them “you asked us for XY and Z, as a result that, and what others have learned from developing successfully fulfilling working environments” etc. Perhaps even arrange a focus group. Interview random employees for insights etc. Really interact with the them, and combine what you learn from them into the key principles to create a personalised experience.

2. Strategy

What have we decided are the ingredients of our new culture? What are the appropriate stages of transition we need to go through?. How can we best time the implementation of each component? Etc.

3. Culture

Implement the principles and values i.e. imparting of business values, goals and vision; activating facilitation, embracing trust and happiness. Empowerment with autonomy and voice.

Continue interacting and wait for the buzz to start creating a more vibrant culture.

4. Lifecycle

Having settled our workforce in with cultural changes -- and feeling more connected -- we can now start to extend the scope of employee engagement to reach our new starters i.e. deep induction. Read “the Zappos Experience” by Joseph Mitchelli, to learn more about deep induction… Before you get to that point though, how do you hire the right people to fit into your culture? Start by doing it yourselves, and make everyone in the business responsible for it. Laszlo Bock (SVP of People Operations at Google) shares an excellent, concise set of insights in this video “the Best Recruiter at Google”

5. Keep Dialog Open

Keep channels open to listen to employees’ feelings/ideas about the culture; also levels of trust, engagement, facilitation, authenticity etc. So we can validate and personalise the experience more. i.e. maintain some of the interaction from the introduction stage.

6. Repetition

The new culture needs constant attention, much like a garden. Ensuring trust requires awareness, “Do we trust each other? Are we happy?”. We also internalise accessible understanding of the business’ values, goals and vision by covering the subjects regularly in a variety of contexts, as we mentioned earlier. Read “the Zappos Experience” by Joseph Mitchelli, to learn why checking trust is critical.

Read “Lateral Thinking: a Textbook of Creativity” by Edward De Bono for a deeper appreciation of potentials created by covering business’ values etc. and also how you might do that.

7. Innovation & Creativity

How could innovative and creative activities be brought into the mix? From the business’ point of view the potential is very rich indeed, and, from a personal point of view, innovation and creativity have genuine potential towards happiness. It is a subject attributed to the pinnacle of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs -- because of the personal meaning and value that can be attained, from being involved and self-actualised. This deserves thought.

It is important to remember that – just like autonomy – to open up this potential in any meaningful way; trust, voice, facilitation, open-mindedness and impartation of business values are essential. For inspiration, read “Lateral Thinking” and “Six Thinking Hats”.

We’re not suggesting you hold a creativity workshop once a year. The effect of integrating creativity/problem-solving/innovation, for the entire workforce, over an hour, is nothing. One hour per week, for a month, basically nothing. But over a year it starts to become meaningful. Over 5 years – we’re really cooking… 10 – there’s no competition!

8. PressMost businesses still operate from a system known as Scientific Management (a.k.a. Taylorism) and because of this only a very low percentage of employees are even basic-level engaged. So, why not get some recognition for the achievement? Zappos Inc. and Google do!

Core Engagementinto the business’ blood-stream

The foundation for cultivating highly-effective employee engagement is to combine factors which genuinely promote happiness with core business values; facilitate day-to-day, and develop this as a perpetual theme within the business’ culture.

the Business-Case

the Business-Case:

Effectiveness

•Higher productivity•Better internal and external communications•Lower staff-turnover•More agile, adaptive, dynamic workforce•Potential for exponential business-acumen

the Business-Case:

Environment and Relationships

•Emotionally-healthy, fulfilling working-environments•More effective and appropriate behaviours•Passionate, authentically loyal workforce•More engaging for everyone

(including customers & company executives)

the Business-Case:

Professionalism

•Overall client-facing potential•Better, more insightful customer service•Responsiveness and authenticity in all areas•Business presence•Feeds into likeability and influence

the Business-Case:

Human Resources

•HR become a revenue-centre•Attract top talent

the Business-Case:

Further

•Innovation and creativity•Cutting-edge management practices•Marketing potential

(pioneers of Employee Engagement)

“Bore-ing!”

“To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means do something a little unconventional and innovative. You must do something that’s above and beyond what’s expected. And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver.” – Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos Inc.

All this might not seem very Googley, or Zapponian. But having a themed, fancy-dress day; in your newly-built, in-house cinema and handing out free bananas once-a-week also would not work unless there was a structure of principles behind it to achieve a thorough sense of morality, fulfilment and empowerment.

Come to think of it, perhaps that would work?! – LOL

There is no doubt that businesses like Zappos and Google are to be admired for their achievement in this area. Zappos’ wackiness factor is definitely worth thinking about. And Google are on a whole-nother level when it comes to the amount of thought that they put into some of the details. We should aspire to them. But even there, behind all their awesome brilliance, there are similar principles at work.

Put the principles in place, and aspire to brilliance!

Also, you don’t need Google’s or Zappos’ budget to get started.

Just add fun

almost done…thanks for checking-out this presentation!

*** There are links to more resources on the next slides ***

If you have any questions you’re welcome to get in touch, you can contact us by email info@AlchemyEngagement.com

Employee engagement contains elusive depth.

On the surface it seems quite simple. However, If you want to implement an effective strategy, authentically tackling the subject -- and you haven’t done already -- you’re going to need to reflect on this subject deeply and devote significant resources for planning, implementation and beyond. If there are any slides where you don’t have tangible depth of understanding – see if you can develop an affinity to the idea, and if you can – find the resources to resolve that. You can contact us if you like.

There is so much disengagement in the world that, to help people; we decided to give our insights away for free.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do -- to explain the entire subject and cover every aspect of how to attain it -- because there is so much information to cover: i.e. history, background, psychology, strategy, relationships, communications, contexts, sentiments, troubleshooting, trust issues, morality, self-limiting beliefs, resilience, fun, balance, personal growth, mastery, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, case studies etc. However, we continue to work towards that – we are working on the subject daily, and even this presentation is updated regularly in response to feedback and more accessible resources.

As such, the totality of information included on our website (including resources such as this presentation, and our homepage) are literally designed to empower you to be able to do this yourself. And there are links at the end of this presentation to lead you to more in-depth resources.

Useful Employee Engagement links:

Thought Leaders

•Zappos’ Insights

•Eric Schmidt

•Chip Conley

•Peak Organisations

Useful Employee Engagement links:

Books

•How Google Works, Eric Schmidt

•the Zappos Experience, Joseph Mitchelli

•Peak, Chip Conley

•Lateral Thinking, Edward De Bono

•Six Thinking Hats, Edward De Bono

•the Velvet Revolution at Work, John Smythe

•Firms of Endearment, Rajendra Sisodia

•Small Giants, Bo Burlingham

Useful Employee Engagement links:

Coming Soon

Laszlo Bock is SVP of People Operations at Google. In his upcoming book “Work Rules!” he promises to teach us lessons from a business who are widely-regarded to be one-of the very-best places – if not the best place -- in the world to work, including:

•Take away managers' power over employees•Learn from your best employees - and your worst•Only hire people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them•Pay unfairly (it's more fair!)•Don't trust your gut: use data to predict and shape the future•Default to open: be transparent, and welcome feedback•If you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough

“a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto with the potential to change how we work and live.”

We’re expecting something special. To pre-order it from Amazon, click here.

Useful Employee Engagement links:

Academia

•Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement, Alan Saks

•Positive Psychology 1504, Harvard

Useful Employee Engagement links:

Other Presentations

•How Google Works (works as in people working, environment/ethos)

•Five Steps to Employee Engagement (inspired by Google)

Linking to our presentation

from your website, and why you might want to.To set the context, Google’s search-results-software looks at these links in the same way people look at recommendations.

In summary, if you believe our presentation covers the subject favourably, you will help more people to find this information by linking to our page (there are details about how to do this on the next slide). Similarly, if you like our ethos, you would help achieve the same thing by linking to our homepage.

Today, our presentation is displayed within the first page of Google’s search results. For example, if you search for “Employee Engagement Presentation” you will see this presentation as around the 9th or 10th result returned. That seems great. However, most people only click on the very-first results. For example, this month only 4% of the people who searched for this presentation followed our link – and that’s despite that it’s more clearly described than some above it. If you search for “Employee Engagement PowerPoint” it’s worse, because Inc. Magazine have an article above ours positively-reinforcing mainstream inaction on the subject. The other entries ahead of us present lots of statistics, whereas we primarily concentrate on the solution, on understanding the solution; and on how you can take real, positive action. We also do not withhold any information with the intention to influence the sale of services. We believe there is so much disengagement in the world that it would be more ethical to help people to do it themselves, for free.

Many thanks for your consideration!

Linking to our presentation

from your website?

If you would like to link to our presentation from your website, please ask your IT department to click here for resources.If you just want the link, here it is:http://AlchemyEngagement.com/employee-engagement-presentation.php