Stop! Don't Choose Employee Engagement as Your New Year's Resolution

• January 3, 2018

Seems like an odd request, but not when you realize that only 8 % of the population keeps their New Year’s Resolutions.  Enhancing your business culture by improving employee engagement is too important to set up for failure.

For the same reasons that people don’t stay on their diets and quit exercising, businesses lose the momentum to build a culture that makes a significant difference in success.  This is true on so many levels, from recruiting the best talent to customer satisfaction.

Here are some reasons companies fail at building a culture of engagement:

1. Too much pressure

The thought of making January 1^st your day to “turn it all around, “gives the illusion that at some point you will be done. In fact, every day can be used as a perfect day to begin and continue a new idea, concept or way of conducting business

Solution:

Make the change manageable.  Take the time to discover where you are right now.  You can only do this if you ask for people outside of your circle of influence what their perspective is.  Then engage those same people to help find the solution to a common goal

2. It’s hard

Nothing soft spoken here.  Yes, it can be.  Any change takes work.  Depending upon where you start and what your goals are, the challenge and its difficulty correspond to the difference.   However, you have the choice to experience the changes as hard or a series of opportunities.

Solution:

In one word, acceptance.  When you can accept that this new movement towards building a community of people with a common goal will take time, repetition and detours, it is less stressful.  Knowing it is a challenge does not mean it has to be hard.

3. It’s complicated

Interestingly enough, the process is as complicated as you make it.  The research I did for my book, Blueprint for Employee Engagement, showed me how important it is to break your goals and ideas into small baby steps.  You actually get to achievement faster that way.

You don’t decide to create a new business culture and voila, it appears.  In fact, when attempting a broad change, many people will be skeptical.

Solution:

By far the best way to simplify an action is to have a plan.  When I coach executives the only way to see to the end result is a plan.  Map out the plan like an outline and then break each point into more action steps.  Then take each of those steps and give them at least 3 stages.  It may look like you are complicating the process, but in actuality you are creating those baby steps so you can succeed with a greater feeling of accomplishment

4. The realization that you have to keep doing it!

My favorite adage is, “Life is a journey and not a destination.”  If you want to make permanent change in your business environment, it is a forever process.  Get ready for setbacks.

Solution:

Once you realize this is a continuous journey a lot of pressure is removed.  It also means that along with the inevitable setbacks comes opportunities to re-evaluate and fine-tune.  This allows you to be on a continuous improvement plan for your entire business.

Don’t make employee engagement and company culture a fad.  Deliberately choose to create a better workplace environment.  Get the best talent, to be the most productive and creative, so they provide your customers and clients with the ultimate in service.  That is a decision you will forever be proud of.

Julie Ann Sullivan has the cure for retaining good talent and reducing absenteeism. Want a free copy of her book, Blueprint for Employee Engagement 37 Essential Elements to Influence, Innovate & Inspire? Talk to Julie Ann @724-942-0486.  Julie Ann hosts the Mere Mortals Unite and Businesses that Care podcasts on C-Suite Radio.  For more information go to http://julieannsullivan.com/