However, a few simple rules need to be reinforced, revised or put in place to restore the much needed momentum that will allow employees to fully engage in their professional activity. Here are a few ideas to reduce disengagement.
1: Define an ambition and know how to explain it
It is well known that people choose to join a company for several reasons: its manager, the company’s image, the job title,…. However, a new dimension is becoming more important: the company’s project. Whether it is entrepreneurial, societal, sustainable, etc., it is a subject that counts more and more. It must therefore be clear and well explained.
2: Playing the transparency game
“Don’t tell your colleagues”. This time is over and young people do not have the taboo of previous generations who allowed silence on certain subjects.
Transparency is the new norm and that’s good.
Transparency means explaining the project and the path to take. It means telling everyone their contribution and the contribution of each to the team. It means knowing how to inform in real time of the decisions made and the reasons for them.
3: Giving meaning
Giving direction, guiding, but also understanding the role one plays in the company’s project.
Today’s jobs, more fragmented than before, have made this reading more difficult. Focused on his own objectives, the employee often has difficulty in having a global vision of the purpose of his task. The role of the manager has intensified in this respect. They must allow each employee to identify his or her contribution to the team’s and/or company’s project.
4: Building trust
Developing delegation and collaboration is essential in a group to create a sense of belonging. Declaring trust requires knowing your collaborators well in order to delegate with accuracy and allow each one to develop without putting themselves at risk. Building a culture of feedback helps develop courage and acceptance of vulnerability and therefore trust.
5: Recognition
Develop a sense of creativity and the ability of each person to take actions that create value. Enable them to engage in motivating and visible projects and recognize in each person, beyond his or her roadmap, his or her value-creating achievements.
The manager is key in this element where the employee expects a precise, uncompromising and supportive attitude.
6: Pride of belonging
Knowing how to involve your team around a common project means above all knowing how to write it and carry it out. It is important to identify the strengths of each person in order to develop them.
The manager must also provide his team with values and behaviors adapted to the culture of the group it forms so that everyone can contribute to its development.
Of course, the commitment of employees and leaders is not the result of a tool or a methodology. It is a complex alchemy. Nevertheless, we have taken up the challenge of providing an operational response to managers so that they can focus on value creation, collaboration and performance. In developing VISULT™, a collaborative objectives-based management platform, we have systematically thought about this question of engagement.