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Today more than ever, organizations rely on the energy, commitment and engagement of their workforce in order to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century. As a former Navy SEAL, I can assure you that one of the fundamental reasons we continue to dominate our battlefield and defeat a very dangerous and decentralized enemy is due to the fact that we have 100% employee engagement. We have ecosystems of empowered teams that are fully engaged and working in a "decentralized command" environment.
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According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report, only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their jobs - meaning that they are emotionally invested in committing their time, talent and energy in adding value to their team and advancing the organization's initiatives. More Gallop research shows that employee disengagement costs the United States upwards of $550 billion a year in lost productivity. So one could see why this is both a serious problem that most leaders and managers face with today's workforce - but also an amazing opportunity for companies that learn to master the art of engagement.

The current business environment, and the world in general, is moving faster than it ever has before. Organizations across the globe are faced with more change than most can handle - in order to compete and dominate their segment they are required to grow faster often giving them less time to focus on managing all of their financial goals. They are forced to grow quickly with fewer resource - to do more with less. Managers have to learn to excel in managing themselves, their teams and meeting organizational goals simultaneously.

It is a common understanding of a vast majority of leaders that the employees are a company's most important asset. But in reality, that is only true when the majority of the workforce is fully engaged in their work. If not, they are either adding minimal value or actively working against the organization.

There are three types of employees in any organization:

Engaged (15% of the workforce). These employees are loyal and emotionally committed to the organization. They are in roles where they excel and where their talents are truly leveraged. They enthusiastically invest in their work and take on responsibilities outside of their job description. They are generally more likely to become emerging leaders and will stay with an organization much longer then disengaged employees.

Not Engaged (67% of the workforce). These employees can be difficult to identify because they are often relatively happy and satisfied in their role. However, they do the bare minimum and are not invested in the company's mission, vision, values or goals. They are less likely to be customer-focused and are not concerned about productivity or company profitability. These team members are both a threat and great opportunity - because with the proper approach, they can be transformed into engaged employees that thrive in the organization.

Actively Disengaged (18% of the workforce). We have all worked alongside these people. They are consistently negative, create a toxic environment, dominate their manager's time and are usually vocal about their unhappiness. What's worse, is they are often subject matter experts well-respected in their unique skillset. And because of that, they often have significant influence over others. These employees can easily spread toxicity throughout an organization and can rarely be transformed into true "A" players.

Most studies point to the fact that employee engagement has a direct impact on productivity and profitability. That seems self-evident, yet many managers still struggle to define, measure and improve engagement in their teams.
The Leader's Role in Engagement
Leaders improve engagement by defining and communicating a powerful vision for the organization. They hire and develop managers that are emotionally invested in the organization's mission and vision and give them the resources to build great teams with the right people in the right roles. They empower.
The Manager's Role in Engagement
Great managers ensure they acquire and develop great talent - they get the right people on the bus and make sure they are in the right seats. They actively prioritize engagement. Their team's activities align perfectly behind the mission narrative of the organization.

In many of my articles, I dive deep in to the methodologies, tools and strategies leaders and managers need to successfully navigate the murky waters of twenty-first century organizational transformation - for leading change. I showcase how to build a culture that is more nimble and adaptive founded on the principles of trust and accountability. The issue at hand is with such low engagement in the workforce, it is very difficult to create a culture of trust and accountability.

70% of organizational transformation efforts fall significantly short of realizing the company's goals. Why? Because change is hard, takes longer and usually has higher hard and soft costs than managers and leaders generally plan for. Change can be intensely personal for employees, causes fear and can actually reduce productivity when approached improperly.

Humans are emotional creatures - and most managers hold the misconception that their team members are largely rational in their decision-making process. Yet studies show that we base 70% of our decisions on emotional factors and only 30% on rational factors. But this can also be a great way to improve engagement. Improving engagement is simple - but clearly not easy. Here's how.
5 Powerful Steps to Improve Employee Engagement
How do managers know who is engaged? Their team members need to be able to confidently state the following:

* I know what is expected of me and my work quality.

* I have the resources and training to thrive in my role.

* I have the opportunity to do what I do best - every day.

* I frequently receive recognition, praise and constructive criticism.

* I trust my manager and believe they have my best interests in mind.

* My voice is heard and valued.

* I clearly understand the mission and purpose and how I contribute to each.

* I have opportunities to learn and grow both personally and professionally.

The steps for improving engagement aren't complex, they simply must be prioritized. Which means engagement must be a core function of the manager's role.

All else then falls into place.
Step 1 - Put Everyone in the Right Role
Again, get the right people on the bus and make sure they are in the right roles. This means that all talent acquisition and retention strategies have to be aligned with meeting company goals.
Step 2 - Give Them the Training
No manager or leader can expect to build a culture of trust and accountability - and much less improve engagement - without setting the team up for success. This means providing the proper training and development while removing obstacles.
Step 3 - Task Meaningful Work
Engaged employees are doing meaningful work and have a clear understanding of how they contribute to the company's mission, purpose and strategic objectives. Again, this is why they first have to be placed in the right role. I've made the mistake of hiring great talent just to get them in the door - but didn't have a clear career path or role for them. If you don't sort those details out quickly, they will leave.
Step 4 - Check in Often
The days of simply relying on mid-year reviews for providing feedback are long gone. Today's workforce craves regular feedback - which of course leads to faster course correction and reduces waste. Use both formal and informal check-in strategies - and use them every week.
Step 5 - Frequently Discuss Engagement
Successful managers are transparent in their approach to improving engagement - they talk about it with their teams all the time. They hold "state of engagement" meetings and "engage" everyone in the discussion - and solutions.

Again, these principles are not complex, but must be prioritized. Companies that get this right will drive greater financial returns, surpass their competitors and easily climb to the top of "the best places to work" lists.

So get on it!

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5 Powerful Steps To Improve Employee Engagement

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Today more than ever, organizations rely on the energy, commitment and engagement of their workforce in order to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century. As a former Navy SEAL, I can assure you that one of the fundamental reasons we continue to dominate our battlefield and defeat a very dangerous and decentralized enemy is due to the fact that we have 100% employee engagement.

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Engaged employees are rare. Gallup's most recent global research finds only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. According to the latest State of the American Workplace report, just 33% of employed residents in the United States are engaged at work.

Engaged workers stand apart from their not-engaged and actively disengaged counterparts because of the discretionary effort they consistently bring to their roles. These employees willingly go the extra mile, work with passion, and feel a profound connection to their company. They are the people who will drive innovation and move your business forward.

Contrast this with actively disengaged employees, who are more or less out to damage your company. Not only are they unhappy at work, but they are intent on acting out their unhappiness. They monopolize managers' time and drive away customers. Whatever engaged employees do -- such as solve problems, innovate, and create new customers -- actively disengaged employees will work to undermine.

Not-engaged employees offer perhaps the greatest untapped opportunity for businesses to improve their performance and profitability. Not-engaged workers can be difficult to spot. They are not overtly hostile or disruptive and likely do just enough to fulfill their job requirements. They sleepwalk through their day, uninspired and lacking motivation. They have little or no concern about customers, productivity, profitability, safety, or quality. They are thinking about lunch or their next break and have essentially "checked out."

The majority of the global workforce is not engaged: most employees reluctantly head to work, lacking energy and passion for their jobs. Converting this group of employees into engaged workers is the most effective strategy that any organization can implement to increase performance and sustainable long-term growth.
Increasing engagement should be a strategic priority
Measuring employee engagement is important. Measuring the right things -- those that matter most to performance and provide a framework for positive change -- is crucial. Gallup's Q ¹² employee engagement measurement tool is designed to initiate companywide transformation to create sustainable growth. This tool is backed by rigorous science linking it to nine integral performance outcomes.

Every two to four years, Gallup completes meta-analysis research -- a statistical technique that pools multiple studies -- on the Q ¹². In 2016, Gallup conducted its ninth meta-analysis on the Q ¹² using 339 research studies across 230 organizations in 49 industries and 73 countries. Within each study, Gallup researchers statistically calculated the work-unit-level relationship between employee engagement and performance outcomes that the organizations supplied.

Researchers studied 82,248 work units, including nearly 1.9 million employees. This latest iteration of the meta-analysis further confirmed the well-established connection between employee engagement and key performance outcomes:

customer ratings

profitability

productivity

turnover (for high-turnover and low-turnover organizations)

safety incidents

shrinkage (theft)

absenteeism

patient safety incidents

quality (defects)

Gallup researchers studied the differences in performance between engaged and actively disengaged work units and found that those scoring in the top half on employee engagement nearly doubled their odds of success compared with those in the bottom half.

Work units in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile units by 10% on customer ratings, 17% in productivity, 20% in sales, and 21% in profitability. Work units in the top quartile also saw significantly less turnover (24% in high-turnover organizations and 59% in low-turnover organizations), shrinkage (28%), and absenteeism (41%) and fewer safety incidents (70%), patient safety incidents (58%), and quality defects (40%). (See graphic "Engagement's Effect on Key Business Outcomes.")

The 2016 meta-analysis verified once again that employee engagement relates to each of the nine performance outcomes studied. Gallup also finds that the strong correlations between engagement and performance are highly consistent across different organizations from diverse industries and regions of the world.
Building a constituency of engaged employees
If employees truly are a company's best asset, then their care and support should be a priority.

Though important at the organizational level, engagement starts with each person and is subjective. Employees don't check their personalities at the door when they come to work. Knowing that they are respected as individuals at work can have a significant impact on how employees view their overall lives.

Each person's potential extends well beyond his or her job description. And tapping that potential means recognizing how an employee's unique set of beliefs, talents, goals, and life experiences drives his or her performance, personal success, and well-being.

Managers and leaders should know their people -- who they are, not just what they do. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company's bottom line. Here are five strategies organizations can use to help build their constituency of engaged employees:

1. Use the right employee engagement survey. When a company asks its employees for their opinions, those employees expect action to follow. But businesses often make the mistake of using employee surveys to collect data that are irrelevant or impossible to act on. Any survey data must be specific, relevant, and actionable for any team at any organizational level. Data should also be proven to influence key performance metrics.

2. Focus on engagement at the local and organizational levels. Real change occurs at the local workgroup level, but it happens only when company leaders set the tone from the top. Companies realize the most benefit from engagement initiatives when leaders weave employee engagement into performance expectations for managers and enable them to execute on those expectations. Managers and employees must feel empowered to make a significant difference in their immediate environment. Leaders and managers should work with employees to identify barriers to engagement and opportunities to effect positive change. Employees are familiar with the company's processes, systems, products, and customers. They are also experts on themselves and their teams. So it makes sense that they will have the best ideas to maximize these elements and deliver improved performance, business innovation, and better workplace experiences.

3. Select the right managers. The best managers understand that their success and that of the organization relies on employees' achievements. But not everyone can be a great manager. Great managers care about their people's success. They seek to understand each person's strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions. It takes talent to be a great manager, and selecting people who have this talent is important. Whether hiring from outside or promoting from within, businesses that scientifically select managers for the unique talents it takes to effectively manage people greatly increase the odds of engaging their employees. Companies should treat the manager role as unique, with distinct functional demands that require a specific talent set.

4. Coach managers and hold them accountable for their employees' engagement. Gallup's research has found that managers are primarily responsible for their employees' engagement levels. Companies should coach managers to take an active role in building engagement plans with their employees, hold managers accountable, track their progress, and ensure that they continuously focus on emotionally engaging their employees. The most successful managers view the Q¹² as the elements for great managing, not just questions for measuring. By doing so, they gain a powerful framework to guide the creation of a strong, engaged workplace.

5. Define engagement goals in realistic, everyday terms. To bring engagement to life, leaders must make engagement goals meaningful to employees' day-to-day experiences. Describing what success looks like using powerful descriptions and emotive language helps give meaning to goals and builds commitment within a team. Make sure that managers discuss employee engagement at weekly meetings, in action-planning sessions, and in one-on-one meetings with employees to weave engagement into daily interactions and activities and to make it part of the workplace's DNA.

Leaders in the best companies strategically align their employee engagement efforts. They find ways to communicate engagement's effect throughout the year and share best practices across the organization. They use every opportunity, touchpoint, and communication channel to reinforce and recognize the organization's commitment to employee engagement. They integrate employee engagement fully into the business' lexicon.

If employees truly are a company's best asset, then leaders and managers should make caring for them a priority. Organizations have a valuable opportunity to transform their employees' work experiences into ones that are fulfilling and motivating -- and that allow workers to bring their best to work every day.

To learn why and how to build an exceptional and thriving workplace, download the latest State of the American Workplace report.

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Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now

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Engaged employees are rare. Gallup's most recent global research finds only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. According to the latest State of the American Workplace report, just 33% of employed residents in the United States are engaged at work.

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Online Employee Surveys

If you want to recruit and retain the best talent possible, employee surveys can play a big part by helping you understand the impact of existing policies and identify areas for improvement. Whether you're interested in motivating and engaging employees, broadcasting recognition, offering competitive benefits, or measuring everyone's performance, HR surveys can help. With employee feedback and survey results in hand, you'll be able to see what's working, what's not, and track improvements over time.

Improve productivity and morale

You'll make better decisions, improve organizational health, and have a happier workplace when you listen to your employees. Identifying areas of improvement can improve retention, too. Designed by professional survey methodologists, SurveyMonkey's workplace, employee, and training templates can help you get started fast. You can use our surveys as they are or customize them to ask more specific questions about your team. You can also keep your online questionnaires on brand by inserting your logo and choosing company colors.

Here are some ways business owners, HR directors, managers, training & development professionals, and human capital specialists take the pulse of their employees:

Evaluate employees based on feedback from supervisors, peers, and subordinates. This type of feedback is focused on employee assessment from multiple perspectives.

Career Training and Development

What courses, continuing education, or otherwise, do your employees need to meet their objectives? What do employees think of your company's job training and development program? Do employees feel like this is a workplace that nurtures their career goals and ambitions? See more ways we can help evaluate the effectiveness of training and teambuilding events with event planning and feedback questionnaires.

Do employees feel that they are adequately compensated? Does the benefits package match the needs of the staff? Are there perks and benefits they would like to see? Do employees feel that their efforts are being recognized and appreciated? Stay competitive by polling your employees.

Self-Assessment

How would employees rate their job performance and satisfaction? Have they met the goals set at the beginning of the quarter or year? Were the goals set for them reasonable and attainable? Ask employees to evaluate themselves and give examples of what's working and what's not.

Do employees find their jobs and responsibilities to be rewarding? Do they feel challenged and do they still enjoy coming into the office every day? Is there another role that might allow for more fulfillment or better learning potential? Keep morale high by making job satisfaction a priority.

How would employees rate your company and the work environment? Do employees feel stressed out by deadlines? Are employees happy with the direction of the company? Do employees feel engaged with their job and the company? Is there an adequate work life balance? Uncover the secrets to a happier, more productive workforce.

Personnel Policies

What do employees think of various human resource issues? Do employees feel good about workplace safety and company ethics? Are employees satisfied with their coworkers? How do they react to the new policies HR just published? The best way to head off a PR or social media problem is to understand how employees feel before they go public about their grievances.

Across departments, what are the employees' opinions on management? Do supervisors and managers communicate expectations with their direct reports? Are the goals and vision of the company clear to all employees, across teams, departments, and geographies?

Are there any insights from departing workers that might help improve the onboarding experience and overall employee satisfaction for future efforts? Find out why people leave and what you can do to keep others in the fold.

Employee Meeting Surveys

What do your employees think of the quarterly all-hands meeting? Or Happy Hour Thursdays? Do people want to attend more events? What about an offsite to Las Vegas or Honolulu? Send out an event survey to make the next event or meeting even better.

Employee Engagement

As a deeper measure of employee satisfaction, engagement surveys look at every aspect of an employee's experience to see what's motivating them and what keeps them from digging in. The result is actionable insights that lead to a more productive workplace.

Use the employee engagement template, or learn more.

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Create Employee Surveys and Questionnaires | SurveyMonkey

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If you want to recruit and retain the best talent possible, employee surveys can play a big part by helping you understand the impact of existing policies and identify areas for improvement. Whether you're interested in motivating and engaging employees, broadcasting recognition, offering competitive benefits, or measuring everyone's performance, HR surveys can help.

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Quadrupling Growth By Cultivating a Culture of WOW

For retail innovator Zappos, the Why of their brand can be summed up in a single word - happiness.

The concept of delivering happiness is the foundation of the company's culture and values, and informs everything they do, from the way they hire, to their famously responsive customer service and free shipping.

Founder Tony Hsieh arrived at this concept in a circuitous fashion. Unhappy at LinkExchange, the company he founded and sold for a nine-figure sum back in 1998, he knew he needed a change.

After trying his hand at investing in and incubating startups, Hsieh realized his happiness lied in building something from the ground up again. Luckily, he soon found himself at the helm of one his investments - a scrappy online footwear business, whose name was inspired by the spanish word for "shoes." That company was Zappos.

Fast forward to early in 2000, and Zappos was struggling to stay afloat. Low on funding and without a proper marketing budget, the company strategically focused on over-delivering on customer experience as a way to foster word of mouth.

This strategy (combined with a shift in consumer sentiment towards online retail) proved to be exactly what the business needed, and Zappos saw explosive growth. Sales hit $32 million in 2002, a 400% increase from the year before. This turn was a watershed for Hsieh.

While the product was important, he realized that Zappos wasn't in the shoe business. They were in the happiness business.

The company focused on delivering "wow" to their customers, and made extremely attentive customer service and free shipping and returns hallmarks of the brand.

And happiness, he found, didn't have to be mutually exclusive. Customer happiness could coexist with employee happiness, investor happiness, and even his own happiness.

With this as his premise, Hsieh then set about breaking the mission into ten core values. which include "deliver WOW through service," "do more with less," and "be humble."

While the organization has grown and evolved over time, happiness remains the foundation of the culture, in part because of Zappos' unique hiring and onboarding process.

All potential Zappos employees undergo two separate interviews one for job skills, and another for cultural fit, the latter of which is viewed as more importance than the former.

Zappos candidates are also encouraged to socialize with their prospective teams before they are hired to see if they got along outside the office, and often with the CEO himself.

"We ask all potential hires how they feel about socializing with co-workers," Zappos' Insight Manager Erica Javellana explains. If candidates express a desire to keep their business and personal lives separate, that's a red flag. Ideally, Zappos employees can be the same person in and out of the office. "

There's no concept of work-life balance here," she elaborates. "It's all just life."

To really drive home the concept of delivering happiness and how important it is to the business, all newly hired employees (no matter what the job title) go through the same four week training process as the call center reps, two weeks of which is actually spent fielding customer service calls.

The point is to understand the business at its most important touchpoint - at the customer level.

At the end of the training, Zappos new hires are then presented with the option to quit on the spot. Employees who opt to quit are paid for their time and offered a spot bonus (around $2,000).

This cash incentive to leave helps weed out any potential mistakes in the hiring process.

One of the reasons cultural fit is so important is that at Zappos, culture - not policy - drives decision making. Core values, Javellana says, are a framework that inform every interaction, both inside and outside the company.

Zappos' focus on delivering wow has paid off, and helped revolutionize the way business leaders think about purpose and its relationship to engagement.

Revenue has seen hockey-stick growth since Hsieh's eureka moment back in the early 2000s, and the company now earns revenues in excess of $2 billion annually.

The Zappos' story highlights how a purpose-driven company can galvanize employees around a common cause, create an emotional bond between employees and their company, and drive massive profits all at the same time.

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The 2018 Clear & Complete Guide to Employee Engagement

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For retail innovator Zappos, the Why of their brand can be summed up in a single word - happiness. The concept of delivering happiness is the foundation of the company's culture and values, and informs everything they do, from the way they hire, to their famously responsive customer service and free shipping.

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Employee engagement first appeared as a concept in management theory in the 1990s, becoming widespread in management practice in the 2000s, but it remains contested. It stands in an unspecified relationship to earlier constructs such as morale and job satisfaction. Despite academic critiques, employee-engagement practices are well established in the management of human resources and of internal communications.

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Employee engagement is getting up in the morning thinking, "Great, I'm going to work. I know what I'm going to do today. I've got some great ideas about how to do it really well. I'm looking forward to seeing the team and helping them work well today".

Employee engagement is about understanding one's role in an organisation, and being sighted and energised on where it fits in the organisation's purpose and objectives.

Employee engagement is about having a clear understanding of how an organisation is fulfilling its purpose and objectives, how it is changing to fulfil those better, and being given a voice in its journey to offer ideas and express views that are taken account of as decisions are made.

Employee engagement is about being included fully as a member of the team, focussed on clear goals, trusted and empowered, receiving regular and constructive feedback, supported in developing new skills, thanked and recognised for achievement.

Engaged organisations have strong and authentic values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two-way promises and commitments - between employers and employees - are understood and fulfilled.

What's employee engagement for you and me as employers?

Employee engagement is about positive attitudes and behaviours leading to improved business outcomes, in a way that they trigger and reinforce one another.

Employee engagement is about our employees feeling pride and loyalty working for our organisation, being a great advocate of the organisation to our clients, users and customers, going the extra mile to finish a piece of work.

Employee engagement is about drawing on our employees' knowledge and ideas to improve our products and services, and be innovative about how we work.

Employee engagement is about drawing out a deeper commitment from our employees so fewer leave, sick absence reduces, accident rates decline, conflicts and grievances go down, productivity increases.

Employee engagement is about organisation actions that are consistent with the organisation's values. It is about kept promises, or an explanation why they cannot be kept.

What employee engagement is not!

Employee engagement cannot be achieved by a mechanistic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort by manipulating employees' commitment and emotions. Employees see through such attempts very quickly and can become cynical and disillusioned.

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What is Employee Engagement - Engage for Success

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Employee engagement is getting up in the morning thinking, "Great, I'm going to work. I know what I'm going to do today. I've got some great ideas about how to do it really well. I'm looking forward to seeing the team and helping them work well today".