Employee Engagement For Dummies

Today more than ever, companies and leaders need a road map to help them boost employee engagement levels. Employee Engagement For Dummies helps employers implement the necessary plans to create and sustain an engaging culture, allowing them to attract and retain the best people while boosting their productivity and creativity.

Employee Engagement For Dummies helps you foster employee engagement, a concept that furthers an organization's interests through ensuring that employees remain involved in, committed to, and fulfilled by their work. It covers: practical steps to boost employee engagement with your company or team; how to engage different generations of employees; the keys to reduce voluntary employee turnover; practical tools to help retain and engage your employees; processes that will boost employee retention and productivity; hiring the best fits from the start; and much more.

• Helps you recognize and understand the impact of positive employee engagement
• Helps you attract and retain the best employees

Employee Engagement For Dummies is for business leaders at all levels who are looking to better engage their employees and increase morale and productivity.

Foreword xiii

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part I: Getting Started with Employee Engagement 5

Chapter 1: Basic Training: Employee Engagement Basics 7

Say What? Defining Employee Engagement 8

Engagement is not a “program” 9

There is no “there”: Engagement is a journey, not a destination 10

Making It Happen: Driving Engagement 11

Pick Me! Pick Me! Picking the Right People for Engagement 13

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Measuring and Recognizing Engagement 14

Chapter 2: The Hard Sell: Making a Business Case for Employee Engagement 15

What’s the Big Deal? Why Employee Engagement Matters 15

Grow your own: Cultivating customer satisfaction with employee engagement 17

Profit margin: Driving profits with employee engagement 18

Danger, Will Robinson! The Dangers of Disengagement 18

Breeding Ground: Engagement Breeds Innovation (Or Is It the Other Way Around?) 22

We Are the Champions: Finding and Developing Engagement Champions 27

Objective Case: Setting Goals and Objectives for Your Engagement Plan 28

On a Budget: Budgeting for Engagement 30

Chapter 3: Engagement Gauges: Finding Your Employee Engagement Baseline 31

Survey Says: Conducting Employee Engagement Surveys 32

Working with a consultant 33

Asking the right questions 34

Analyzing the results 35

Communicating the results to your employees 37

Going forward after a survey 37

Exit Only: Conducting Exit Interviews 39

Who to interview and who should do the asking 39

When to conduct an exit interview 40

What to ask 40

Sit! Stay! Conducting Stay Interviews 42

Who to interview and who should do the asking 42

What to ask in a stay interview 43

Measuring Stick: Other Engagement Barometers 43

Assessing your training investment 44

Tracking employee referrals 45

Chapter 4: Motivation Nation: Engagement and Motivation 47

Outie or Innie? Understanding Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation 47

Key Club: Identifying Key Intrinsic Motivational Drivers 49

A No-Malarkey Hierarchy: Putting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Work for You 52

A Yearn to Learn: Fostering a Learning Culture 55

Chapter 5: Talk to Me! The Importance of Communication 59

Mind the Gap: The Great Organizational Communication Fissure 60

Two-Way Street: Establishing Two-Way Communication 61

Bob the Builder: Building a Communication Protocol 63

Tool Time: Maximizing the Various Communication Tools 67

Face to face 68

Phone 69

E-mail 71

Social media 71

Putting it all together 72

He Said, She Said: Resolving Conflict 75

Identifying your conflict-management style 75

Resolving conflict with ease 79

Dealing with difficult people 80

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Communicating Change 82

Talking It Up: Communicating Your Engagement Efforts 84

Communication Don’ts 86

Part II: Strategies for Driving Engagement 89

Chapter 6: Winning Their Hearts and Minds: Driving Engagement with a Sense of Purpose 91

Sightseeing:

values Building Your Line of Sight 91

Identifying your firm’s purpose 93

Defining your firm’s 95

Identifying your organization’s vision 96

Building your strategic plan 97

Promoting your purpose, values, and vision 98

Be Responsible! Engaging Employees through Corporate Social Responsibility 100

Chapter 7: People Who Lead People: Engaging Employees through Leadership 105

Vice Versus: Management Versus Leadership 105

The Big 12: Identifying 12 Leadership-Based Engagement Drivers 107

Top It Off: Leadership Starts at the Top 108

Purple People Leader: Identifying the Behaviors and Traits of Engaged Leaders 110

Here Comes the Train Again: Training Managers to Become Engaged Leaders 113

Put Me In, Coach! Coaching for Engagement 115

A quick guide to coaching 115

Using the GROW model 118

Do This, Not That: Identifying Leadership Best Practices 119

I feel you, man 119

Offering a hand up 120

You’re not the boss of me! 120

Recognize, recognize, recognize 120

Chapter 8: Talkin’ ’Bout My Generation: Driving Engagement across Generations 121

Boom Baby: Attracting, Training, Engaging, and Rewarding Baby Boomers 122

Attracting and hiring Boomers 123

Training Boomers 123

Engaging Boomers 124

Rewarding Boomers 125

X Marks the Spot: Attracting, Training, Engaging, and Rewarding Generation X 126

Attracting and hiring Generation X 126

Training Generation X 127

Engaging Generation X 128

Rewarding Generation X 128

Y Ask Y: Attracting, Training, Engaging, and Rewarding Generation Y 130

Attracting and hiring Generation Y 131

Training Generation Y 131

Engaging Generation Y 132

Rewarding Generation Y 134

Putting It All Together 134

Chapter 9: Go, Team! Driving Engagement through Team Development 139

Yay, Team: Identifying Characteristics of an Engaged Team 139

Stormin’ Norman: Exploring Tuckman’s Stages 141

The forming stage 143

The storming stage 144

The norming stage 145

The performing stage 146

Putting it all together 147

From a Distance: Leading Teams from Afar 150

Team Player: Exploring Team-Building Activities 151

Running a successful team-building activity 152

Tackling common challenges 153

Looking at effective team-building activities 154

Hit Me with Your Best Shot: Conducting a High-Impact Team Workshop 161

Chapter 10: Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl: Driving Engagement through Branding 163

Better Relate than Never: Understanding How Branding and Engagement Relate 164

Hello, My Name Is _____: Defining Who You Are 165

Talking It Up: Communicating Your Employment Brand 168

Branding internally 168

Branding externally 169

Tri-Angle: Understanding Tri-Branding 171

Enlisting your employees as brand ambassadors 173

Making sure your customers sing your praises 174

Leveraging other stakeholders in your tri-branding efforts 175

Chapter 11: Game On! Driving Engagement with Gamification 177

Paging Mr Webster: Defining Gamification 178

But What Does It Do? Understanding What Gamification Does 178

Get with the Program! Developing a Gamification Program 179

Pinpointing your business objectives 179

Identifying desired behaviors 181

Choosing rewards 182

Selecting game mechanics 184

Part III: Selecting the Right Employees to Increase Engagement 189

Chapter 12: You’re Hired! Hiring for Engagement 191

Trait Up: Pinpointing Key Behaviors and Traits 192

Good, Better, Best: Using the BEST Approach for Job Selection and Advancement 194

Assembling the BEST job description 196

Looking at a sample BEST characteristics matrix 199

Mix and Match: The Importance of Diversity 203

Heads or Tails: Hiring from the Outside or Promoting from Within 204

Identifying investment employees 205

Spotting performers 206

Recognizing potentials 206

Identifying transition employees 207

What Newspaper Ad? Leveraging Social Media 208

Exploring LinkedIn 209

Using Facebook for recruitment 209

Connecting with potential recruits on Twitter 210

Using YouTube to find prospective employees 212

Making the Sale: Selling Yourself to Prospective Employees 213

Chapter 13: Why Do You Want to Work Here? Interviewing Job Candidates 217

Best in Show: Interviewing the BEST Way 217

Step 1: Develop your BEST profile 217

Step 2: Develop your interview questions 218

Step 3: Conduct preliminary phone interviews 218

Step 4: Prepare for the face-to-face interview 220

Step 5: Hold the face-to-face interview 222

Step 6: Collect input from your selection team 223

Step 7: Check references 224

Step 8: Extend an offer of employment 226

Kick Ask: Asking the Right Questions 227

Assessing the Candidate’s Responses 233

Weighting questions 233

Rating answers 234

Scoring candidates 234

Chapter 14: All Aboard! Onboarding Techniques to Foster Engagement 235

What’s the Big Deal, Anyway? The Importance of Onboarding 236

Brain Swap: Considering Things from the New Employee’s

Point of View 237

The Final Countdown: Preparing for a New Employee 238

What to do before day one 238

What to do on day one 240

What to do during week one 240

Great Expectations: Performance Management and Onboarding 242

Part IV: Measuring and Recognizing Engagement 245

Chapter 15: Measure Up: Measuring Performance and Engagement 247

Score! Building a Balanced Scorecard to Measure an Organization’s Performance 248

Designing an effective balanced scorecard 249

Maintaining your balanced scorecard 250

Communicating results 250

Take It Personally: Measuring Individual Performance 252

Team Player: Measuring Team Performance 254

Measure by Measure: Measuring Employee Engagement 257

Key metrics for measuring employee engagement 257

Assessing your team’s level of engagement 258

Chapter 16: Goal! Setting Performance Goals and Conducting Performance Appraisals 261

Get Smart: Establishing SMART Performance Goals 261

Don’t Be a Tool: Retooling the Performance Appraisal Process 264

Building an employee development plan 265

Conducting 360 assessments 270

Collecting “more of, same as, less of” feedback 273

The Secret of Your Succession: Building Succession into Performance Appraisal 276

Identifying successors 277

The great disconnect 277

Leadership development 278

Chapter 17: You Win! Rewards and Recognition 281

The Rewards of Rewarding: Understanding Rewards 281

Designing a total rewards strategy 282

Developing your compensation strategy 284

Avoiding reward pitfalls 289

Rec Center: Recognizing Employees 290

Building a recognition program 291

Setting a recognition budget 293

Recognition ideas and best practices 293

Providing positive feedback 294

Building a celebratory culture 295

Chapter 18: Help Me! Helping Struggling Employees 297

Copping an Attitude: Aptitude- Versus Attitude-Based Disengagement 298

Determining whether the disengagement comes down to aptitude or attitude 298

Looking at the reasons for aptitude- and attitude-based disengagement 301

Plotting employees using the aptitude/attitude matrix 303

Throw Me a Line! Helping Underperforming Employees 307

You’re Fired! A Word on Firing 308

Part IV: The Part of Tens 311

Chapter 19: Ten Ways to Engage New Hires 313

Start Before the First Day 313

Make the New Hire Feel Welcome on Day One 314

Load ‘Em Up with Swag 314

Give the New Hire a Welcome Tour 315

Stop Making Snoozer Introductions 315

Recognize That Cliques Exist — Even in the Business World 315

Introduce New Hires to the C Levels 316

Take the Mystery Out of It (and Stay More Productive Yourself) 317

Have New Hires Meet with Key People in the First Month 317

Set Goals for New Hires 318

Chapter 20: Ten (Or So) Additional Employee Engagement Resources 319

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H Pink 319

Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives, by Wayne Cascio and John Boudreau 320

Gallup’s State of the American Workplace Report 320

The Employee Engagement Group 321

1501 Ways to Reward Employees, by Bob Nelson 321

How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie 321

Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer, by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell 322

Who’s Sinking Your Boat, by The Employee Engagement Group 322

The University of Windsor Employee Engagement & Development Website 323

Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay, by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans 323

Business Gamification For Dummies by Kris Duggan and Kate Shoup 324

Chapter 21: Ten Ways Engaged Employees Help Your Bottom Line 325

It’s All About the Effort, Baby! 325

Voluntary Turnover Is Expensive 326

I’m Really Not That Sick! 326

The Bottom Line Is the Bottom Line 326

A Happy Customer Is a Returning Customer 327

Innovate or Perish 327

Hey, Want to Work for My Company? 328

“I’ll Volunteer” 328

Doing Well by Doing Good 329

Can You Expand Your Margins? 329

Index 331

Bob Kelleher is the founder of The Employee Engagement Group, a global consulting firm that works with leadership teams to implement best-in-class leadership and employee engagement programs. He is the author of Louder Than Words and Creativeship, as well as a thought leader, keynote speaker, and consultant.