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Leadership Engagement: The Key to the Kingdom of Employee Engagement and How to Make It Work!

By Christa Simpson, MEdTractor Supply Company

Objectives Overview:

• Align HR with the organization’s other functional leaders to create a workplace environment that drives employee engagement and results.

• Use coaching and influence strategies to enhance employee effectiveness.

• Engage employees at all levels of the organization to embrace change as a means to set goals, communicate, and listen to employees/leadership.

If you had the power to make one change

in your organization that could impact

leadership engagement,

what would you like to try?

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Employee Engagement:

“The harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles.”

Dr. William A. Kahn, the Father of Employee Engagement

Commitment & Interest in a Job or Organization:

It’s the very real measurement of how strongly a person feels about the intangible things a job has to offer.

Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.

How much of my real, authentic, personal self am I going to reveal and express in my work?

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34% of Employees

are Engaged at

Work

0

5

10

15

20

25

No Engagement Engaged Employees

Revenue Increase – Avg. Company over 3 Years

8.9%

20.1% 87%LessLikely toLeave

STAY!

Only 3% of disengaged employees

agree

59% of engaged employees say their job brings out their

most creative

ideas

Gallup Research

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Organizations with more engaged employees have:

➢less attrition

➢a more motivated workforce

➢yield higher profits

Engagement is all about

feelings and how you make people

feel

Employees are truly "engaged" when they are:

➢giving 100% effort

➢utilizing their full talent potential

➢working to develop their talent set even further

When employees are meeting all three criteria, their

emotional states will also be characterized by:

➢a deep sense of fulfillment

➢pride

➢excitement

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Great leaders have emotional intelligence but to really drive results and be exceptional leaders need, use EQ2 engagement intelligence.

EQ2 involves:

➢ understanding your people➢ finding their individual motivators ➢ work and on those hot buttons to improve morale, attitude and results

Ken Wright, Engage4Results

The engagement of an organization’s executive team is the starting point and is the most critical element in the engagement of any organization.

Company-wide engagement is an important management objective, and achieving it

starts with the CEO.

ACTION PLANS:

➢ Don’t delegate engagement to the HR leader. Make this one of the CEO’s key priorities to drive forward, starting with his or her direct team.

➢ Don’t over-focus on the masses; focus on assessing the leadership team first, and the rest will follow.

➢ Do start with the top, making sure the right leaders are in the right positions.

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ACTION PLANS:

➢Do a leadership engagement audit before measuring mid-management and staff.

➢Don’t tie managers’ performance to an engagement score; this can create misaligned incentives and fosters the wrong behavior.

➢Do set goals for demonstrating adherence to:• company values• communicating and listening to employees and

leadership• take leadership action when appropriate.

Leadership engagement precedes employee engagement

3 Drivers of Employee Engagement by Great Leaders (GRT)➢ Growth

• Career growth• Personal growth as an individual

➢ Recognition – not about awards• Ideas count• Talent noticed• Work appreciated

➢ Trust• Senior leaders are trusted• Company and industry have a bright future = confidence

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HR can have conversations that encourage leadership to Be Mindful that their words and actions have impact =

Incredible responsibility

Meaningfulness of the job was identified as the third most important employee engagement driver by 76% of respondents toSHRM’s 2016 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report.

77% Relationship with co-workers

77% Opportunities to use skills & abilities

76% Meaningfulness of their job

Give Them Something to Aim For - 90 day goals• 5-7 topics prepared in advance by Leader; request other topics by team.• Leader takes on the role of a Facilitator.• Jot down ideas, process innovations, and strategies on board. • Have group develop KPIs or MBOs. • Decide who will take ownership of initiatives to be accountable for

communication and tracking.• Leader to brainstorm with employees on resources needed to reach

goals, trainings available, etc. • Quick touchbase throughout the 90 days: motivation & tracking.

Refocus on the Mission• Burnout occurs when you’re too focused on the job itself and not the

mission. • Reconnect to the organization’s higher goals. • What’s the greater good being served?

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Fake It Till You Make It• Be positive.• Inspire hope. • Practice acting. • Help others. • Spend time helping a team member.• Sit down with an employee and help that person find a way to have a

better day.• Small gift of time = big reminder of passion for leading & helping others.

Ask for Help Yourself Leader ≠ Superhuman• Find other leaders that you respect. Ask someone to be a mentor. • Find out how they deal with burnout. • We were never meant to walk this road alone.• List of leaders willing to be mentors. • Create Advice Board or bank of videos with Q&A

o Common issues/solutions/methods

HR Connections: Understanding

Understand your leadership’s customerConnect HR’s value to what is most important to leadership.

• What is happening in their market? • What pressures are they under to differentiate themselves from the competition in

their customer’s eyes?• What kind of skills will they need to achieve that differentiation?

Understand the motivations of customers, regulators, industry groups and competitors. • Connect to the challenges our business line executives are facing in forming and

executing a winning strategy. • Shape and focus the value HR delivers to help our customers differentiate their

offerings and capture and retain their customers. • Earn the right to engage in strategic discussions that take place at the senior table.

HR Connections: Learn how to “sell” your value• Show how any initiative HR proposes will directly improve the business. • Sell HR ideas.• Connect ideas directly to one or more of three key business drivers.

1. How can this investment help to grow revenue?2. How can this investment reduce or help to better manage our costs?3. How can this investment help to better manage our risks?

Revenue. Cost. Risk. To be relevant, to be invited to the senior table, we need to ensure that any idea we propose connects directly to one or more of these areas. Understand:

• How money is generated.• How it is spent.• What risks are involved in creating a profitable, competitive company.

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HR Connections: Concise and Cash Focused

Get to the Point – Answer First• Presentation: 1 page summary, including the relevant numbers. Concise argument. • Back up your argument with relevant research and realistic financial numbers.

o Do the research and analysis and have your backup material ready, but don’t turn the telling of the story into a painful, mind numbing experience.

How do we get from here to money?• Show the key decision makers how the organization or department will get from here to

the point in time when their investment reaps the predicted returns. o How do we get from here to money?

• Show the change that will take place, when the investment will be required, when they can expect a return on that investment and how the risks of implementation will be managed.

HR Connections: Change the Conversation

We need to think about what we do in terms of ultimate value to the business and -wherever realistically possible - translate that value into hard dollar financial terms.

This conversation must be the start of our approach to any problem or project: 1. What is the business problem? 2. What financial measure or risk mitigation practice am I working to improve? 3. How can I plan and implement this change that gets us from here to money with

the greatest speed and the least risk?

When we are discussing, researching, defining and preparing our arguments we need to challenge each other to define the business impact and to express it in succinct business terms and financial numbers.

Ultimately, we need to have that change in conversation with senior executives. Even if we don’t have strong numbers, we need to be willing to talk about the numbers, about business impact, about their stakeholders, about how their strategy can be strengthened.

Increase Business Acumen

Seeking MBA’s, pursuing outside work on boards, taking on job rotations, and even seeking out mentors to close the skill gap.

Other opportunities that could be pursued on a daily/weekly basis include:

• Attending industry professional group meetings• Reading industry-specific and business articles• Meeting with other business leaders to learn more and simply

being curious.

The point is to be a business sponge and soak up any and all knowledge related to the business and industry.

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Turn HR Data into Insight

• Hot topic = metrics and analytics. • No longer is reporting cost-per-hire and days-to fill good enough.• Today’s business leaders want data that has meaning to the business. • They need insight. • Data is just rows and columns of numbers. Insight is created when

someone can make sense of those rows and columns and apply it to the business in an impactful way.

• Be good consumers of data. • Understand what the data is trying to say and how to use it to

increase business results.

Become a Strategy Executer

Key Reasons Strategies Fail: 1. Poor communications2. Lack of accountability3. Ineffective leadership

• HR organizations can mitigate failures with skills within the function.

• Using HR’s communication and performance management skills, goals and objectives can be aligned to the front line where execution takes place.

• For any business to be successful, all employees need to understand the strategy and what it means to them on a day-to-day basis.

• Performance management is a great tool to enable execution from top to bottom.

Leverage Performance Management

By analyzing performance data, HR organizations can proactively identify:• who’s at risk for leaving• whether top performers are sustaining performance or not• how bonus and/or salary increases are really impacting performance.

This data is critical, results-oriented and relatively easy to calculate.Analyzing data is key.

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Rebrand HR

The way we communicate to other business units about HR’s value.

“I help, I assist” and “I partner with.” Really what we need is a shift in mindset.Our vernacular needs to change to words like: “I lead, I create, I analyze, etc.”

It’s the difference between communicating, “We help employees” and “We create programs that enable our employees to be 10% more productive.”

Communication matters and so does the way we tell our story. In order to re-brand HR you have to use business acumen, HR analytics and excellent communications skills to be successful.

360 Feedback

Leaders with the highest employee engagement scores –Results that were high on:

Team-oriented behaviors are the most important for leaders in achieving high employee engagement.

Supports

The

Team

Performs Effectively

In TheirRole

Displays

Integrity

How Committed Are Your Employees to Helping Each Other?

Leaders must build an organization of Collaboration:

➢ Pride in Purpose – Organization’s Mission

➢ Group Identification – Elite Organization

➢ Trust – Make Yourself Vulnerable

➢ Fairness – Pay, Perks, and Personal Treatment

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Leadership IQ Survey: 30,000 Employees

100 + questions

➢ My leader recognizes my accomplishments with praise.

➢ Working here inspires me to give my best effort.

Power of Praise

Make it Meaningful – Not generic group callouts or idle expectations.

Be Specific – Clear picture of performance.

Real Time – Catch them in the act.

No Criticism – Another time. HIGH

FIVES!

Highly motivated employees tend to be more productive, better skilled, and more willing to grow and learn when compared to their unengaged counterparts.

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200,000 employees

500 industries

Money was 7th!

What’s Motivating

Employees

to Go the

Extra Mile?

1. Camaraderie

Peer Motivation

2. Do Good

3. Feel Encouraged/

Be Recognized

Motivated and engaged employees tend to have better attendance records, are significantly less likely to quit, and are more likely to foster closer

relationships with their coworkers.

They tend to be the culture drivers, coming up with more creative solutions to work problems.

So the better leaders can motivate their employees, and keep their team engaged, the more their business will organically grow.

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Recognition Tool

Integrating peer-to-peer recognition does wonders to increase engagement, build team spirit, and just make people feel good at work.

Ample studies show that recognition impacts people in a big way, especially at the office. Just look at these stats from Bersin & Associates. It found that organizations with effective recognition programs:

• Enjoy a 31% lower voluntary turnover rate versus companies with no such programs

• Experience 14% higher employee engagement and productivity than those without recognition

Tractor Supply Co. uses a Peer to Peer Recognition program.

• Employee happiness depends more on the relationship between an employee and their coworkers than with their direct manager.

• As a result, a recognition system shouldn’t be limited to the manager-subordinate relationship.

• Instead, it should tap the entire peer network to reflect the shift toward cross-functional teams and multidisciplinary roles in today’s workplaces.

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A simple survey tool can be used to share a peer-recognition feature for employees to call out coworkers who have gone above and beyond, demonstrated great teamwork or customer service, or somehow demonstrated the company values in an exceptional way.

Just be sure employees can actually see their recognition. Unseen recognition is like not getting any recognition at all.

Cheers for Peers - one employee recognizes another for anything they feel their colleague deserves.

• Leaders must be involved in the survey process to truly understand employee sentiment and bring organizational change.

• At the same time, you should rally other managers and individual employees to help analyze survey feedback and add context to the rich responses you’re getting.

There's a strong positive relationship between how much

people learn on the job and how much they love their job.

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Survey: Short Touchbase for Feedback

Few things make employees feel as valued as having their recommendations implemented.

Survey feedback is a great opportunity to make this happen.

When responses bring up problem situations, use this as a chance to gather employee suggestions to come up with a solution.

This crowd-sourced approach will not only give you ideas you wouldn’t have thought of but also increase the chances of solutions being adopted.

Start the Process:

Share feedback: It sounds obvious, but employees can’t take part in solving the problem if they are not first aware of it. Schedule regular sharing sessions to keep everyone abreast of feedback.

Encourage discussion: Ask your employees to talk about the responses. Do they agree or disagree? Starting the conversation helps to get them thinking about the problems and what the key pain points are.

Ask for solutions: Oftentimes, employees may already have solutions in mind, but haven’t been asked. Asking for solutions starts bringing these ideas to the table and lets colleagues get excited and on board with the solutions.

NO judgments: This should be a positive, collaborative process. Rather than knocking down ideas, encourage that all ideas be listened to.

Effect Survey Sharing:

Prescreen results: Review all data ahead of time to make sure it doesn’t reveal information that’s embarrassing or offensive to another employee.

Set it so you don’t forget it: Make sure to set up a convenient time to review survey data when most, if not all, participants can gather and discuss the findings.

Transparent conversation: Use the findings to begin a healthy discussion of problems, not a jumping-off point for accusations. One good way to initiate this is to discuss all the good points highlighted in the feedback and recognition portion.

Determine next steps: Be sure to create an action plan to follow up on issues.

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Increasing collaboration, transparency, and communication in a regular, visible way transforms company culture.

Change is __________________.

hard, difficult, exciting, scary, chaotic, daunting, time-consuming, frustrating, intimidating, constant, on-going,

inevitable, exhausting, wonderful.

By understanding the basic phases of change and the psychological state of your employees, you can prepare their

culture for change and avoid common pitfalls of failed change efforts.

To move from the present state to the future state you need to understand the three stages of change:

• Why• Where• How

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Why Do We Need To Change?If people don’t understand why they need to change, they won’t change.

Make the present state significantly less comfortable.

• Coming threats to our current success. • We’re not really as perfect as we think we are.

Where is this Change taking us?Make the future state looks a lot better than the present state. Are we going somewhere good? Is the future state more attractive than the present state?

Employees need to visualize that there is a better place waiting for us out there and they need to be able to imagine themselves in that place.

How will we get there?

Give employees a sense of just how it is they will get from the present to future state.One of the roadblocks to change is the gap between the present state and the future state. To employees, that gap might seem insurmountable. Build a bridge; make it easy to move from here to there.

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One Step at a Time

If people understand why they need to change and where they’re going, they might still freeze up if they can’t begin to imagine how they could ever make the journey. So leaders need to show that while there’s a big journey ahead of us, we can break it down into bite-sized steps and take them one at a time.

If people know why they need to change, where they’re going, and how they can get there, they’re going to be a lot more likely to buy in and join you on the journey.

3 Key Drivers for Leaders to Focus on for Employee Engagement to make life GRT at work:

➢ GROWTH➢ RECOGNITION➢ TRUST

Questions?

Thoughts?

Reflections?

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THANKYOU

Christa Simpson, MEdlinkedin.com/in/christasimpson

csimpson.tn@gmail.comcsimpson@tractorsupply.com

BONUS: Tips to increase employee engagement

Management/Leadership•Have a clear internal communication strategy•Execute that strategy, don’t just leave it at a planning stage•Promote business transparency•Communicate future plans and strategy•Encourage employees to talk openly and engage in giving and receiving feedback•Listen to them•Recognize their efforts•Practice social leadership

Meaningful Work•Find out what kind of projects keep your employees engaged•Align your projects with your employees visions and values•Encourage constant communication•Be there for them•Celebrate achievements•Encourage them to bring new projects to the table•Learn about neuroscience

Relationships with CoWorkers•Respect people’s differences•Acknowledge your co-workers•Respect people’s time & priorities be willing to admit your mistakes and apologize gracefully•Live up to your end of the job•Pitch in and help out•Be willing to admit your mistakes and apologize gracefully

Resources:

Harrison, Jim. The Relevant HR Professional: Five Strategies to Better Engage with Senior Business Leaders. Queen's IRC Facilitator. Aug. 2013 http://irc.queensu.ca/articles/relevant-hr-professional-five-strategies-better-engage-senior-business-leaders.

How Do Leaders Drive Employee Engagement? Leadership Engagement 360. NBO Group. http://www.nbogroup.com/solutions-leadership-engagement.

Kruse, Kevin. Employee Engagement 2.0 How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A Real-World Guide for Busy Managers). https://www.amazon.com/Employee-Engagement-2-0-Performance-Real-World/dp/1469996138.

Lebowitz, Shana. 8 questions to ask your CEO that make you look smart. Business Insider. 21 Feb. 2018 http://www.businessinsider.com/questions-to-ask-the-ceo-2017-3.

Lipman, Victor. What Motivates Employees to "Go the Extra Mile?” Psychology Today. 5 Dec. 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-the-manager/201412/what-motivates-employees-go-the-extra-mile.

Missildine, Cathy. How HR Can Transition from Business Partner to Business Leader. SABA Blog. Business Impact. 27 Mar. 2015, https://www.saba.com/blog/how-hr-can-transition-from-business-partner-to-business-leader.

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Moore, Karl, Ph. D. “Leadership Engagement Always Trumps Employee Engagement.” Forbes. 31 Aug. 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2016/08/31/leadership-engagement-always-trumps-employee-engagement/2/#107ccb247906.

Murphy, Mark. Leadership IQ. All Great Leadership Styles Begin By Spending Time With Employees. If Your Employees Aren't Learning, You're Not Leading. Study: The Risks Of Ignoring Employee Feedback. https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/study-the-risks-of-ignoring-employee-feedback.

Nickel, Sunny. 7 Simple Ways to Motivate Your Employees. TinyPulse. 6 Mar. 2018, https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/7-simpson-ways-to-motivate-your-employees.

O’Boyle, Ed. How HR Leaders Can Win a Seat at the Table. Gallup News.http://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/223340/leaders-win-seat-table.aspx.

Reilly, Robyn. Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now. Gallup News. 7 Jan. 2014, http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/166667/five-ways-improve-employee-engagement.aspx.

Schawbel, Dan. Chris Stark: How Leaders Can Create A More Engaged Work Culture. Forbes. 27 Nov. 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2017/11/27/chris-stark-how-leaders-can-create-a-more-engaged-work-culture/#924bdc4113a4.

Simons, Robert L. Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution. https://hbr.org/2010/11/stress-test-your-strategy-the-7-questions-to-ask

The Call for a More Strategic HR: How Its Leaders are Stepping Up to the Plate. A Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Report. Harvard Business School Publishing. 2015, http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-the-call-for-a-more-strategic-hr/$FILE/ey-the-call-for-a-more-strategic-hr.pdf

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