Tips for Creating Employee Engagement

What do you need to do to make sure you are fully engaged in your job and how do you get others engaged in their jobs? We will give one tip a month as there are many things to think about around creating engaged employees.

Do you consider the work you do as a job, a career or a calling? Wrzesniewski & Tosti explore all three of these work orientations in the Encylopidia of Career Development (Sage Publications, 2004). People with a job orientation look at work as a way to cover life needs and find enjoyment in activities outside of work. People with a career orientation are striving for extrinsic rewards like advancement in the organization and improved social standing. People with a calling orientation find great meaning in their work and do not separate what they do in and outside of work. The work matches their values and brings great intrinsic reward.

Do you have a calling orientation? Can you adjust or remake your current job so that you can have this kind of an orientation? Do you need to make the brave move you always thought you needed to wait to make after you retire? If you can find work that you feel passionate about you will be more engaged at work and will deliver much higher levels of performance. When this happens the business numbers will follow.

Here are just a few suggestions for how to connect others you work with to the emotional aspects of what they do in an attempt to help them have greater passion for their work.

• Constantly connect people to the end user and help them experience the value it is bringing to the customer
• Learn the strengths and interests of people you are working with and rearrange projects on the team so that people are getting more energy from their work
• Help people connect to a vision of the work they are doing and how it will leave a legacy for the business that will last beyond the time they are working at the company

Try to manage people not just from the left brain or logical side of their mind but do things to connect to the right brain or the emotions of what people are doing. It is important to note that managing ones emotions is not just a one time event but rather a constant process of connecting them to things that matter in the work they are doing.

Here is a link that will take you to a Strategies article on employee engagement:

Creating Competitive Advantage Through Employee Engagement