Strategies for Creating an Engaged Workforce

Did you know that highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability?

Earlier in my career I was responsible for identifying our outsourced call centers.  We cared tremendously about the support that our customers were provided so this task was extremely in-depth. 

Part of our process was conducting onsite visits and meeting with employees.  These meetings were to build relationships with employees that already worked there, identify their tenure, likes and dislikes of working with a particular company and get a feel for how employees were cared for.  We knew that if employees were cared for, our customers would be.

One of the questions I would always ask during these sessions was

“how much money it would take for you to leave tomorrow to go to another company”?  We’d hear:

$.10
$.60
$.25
$1.00

All the way to “there’s nothing you could pay me to work for another company, I love it here”. 

You can imagine that when we had a room of employees that were willing to leave for $.10 or $.20 it raised red flags. And comparing their employee turnover percentages, it coincided.  

What made the difference between the employees who said $.10 to the ones that said nothing?  Simply put - they were taken care of.  Not just financially but through multiple different avenues.  They received:

Coaching and development
Ongoing training
Current and future career opportunities
Their leaders cared about them
They were having FUN with their teams

AND they were compensated appropriately for their skillset. 

The fact is money is only one piece of the puzzle. 

Pay is not the silver bullet to hiring and retaining your top talent or creating highly engaged teams.   While earning top pay is great, employees are yearning for more. 

And if your organization is striving for higher profitability, ask yourself the following questions:

How are we coaching and developing our employees?
Do our employees have a development plan?
Do we have a training program in place for continued learning opportunities? (anywhere from excel to learning how to communicate more effectively)
Do our leaders know how to do all of the above with their employees?
Is there a structure in place for our leaders to take on the actions above?
Do our leaders care about their employees?
Are we having fun at work? Not with just ping pong tables but genuine fun?

Bottom line, creating an engaged workforce doesn't just save you money, it adds to your profitability.

How does your organization care for its employees?