Lots of effort but little reward. That’s an apt description for employee engagement at many organizations, say the hosts of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement.
“You see a lot of initiatives almost in every organization I've ever talked to around employee engagement. Yet, a lot of times, people don't really make a dent in it,” says Dr. Mohamed Saleh. That’s bad news if the goal is to develop a team-based continuous improvement culture.
In this podcast episode, Salah and John Dyer discuss why employees may be reluctant to participate in improvement programs and, more importantly, what you as a leader can do about it.
It begins with understanding. Try to encourage employee participation and engagement in a workplace that has suffered through decades of bad management and lack of trust in leadership, and you are bound to get fear and suspicion in response, Dyer says.
“The tide will start to turn the moment that employees, first, see that you're really sincere; second, that you're truly engaged in their idea generation and their thoughts, what their issues are; and then third, when they start to see some improvements actually happening,” even minor ones, Dyer says. “The bottom line of all this is keep chipping away. Keep chipping away. Keep chipping away.”
How does “chipping away” manifest itself? Among the suggestions Dyer and Saleh present are:
Do: As a leader, model the behaviors you want to encourage, such as curiosity, empathy and discretionary effort.
Do: Create win-win scenarios so employees know the leader has their back.
Do: Help individuals stretch and grow.
Don’t: Assume that fielding employee surveys, recognition platforms, mentorship programs, onboarding programs, town hall meetings and regular one-on-one meetings translate to creating an engaged workforce. The podcast hosts don’t downplay the merit of such practices but add a caution: If the practices don’t relate to the three previously mentioned Do’s, which Saleh calls “respect for people” principles, then they can become “silos of tactics” and don’t go anywhere, he suggests.
Do: Consider why you are selecting individuals to participate on kaizen teams. Is it to help that person develop a skill, or are you effectively picking names out of a hat?
Do: Consider people development as a key performance indicator for leaders.
“Your objective as a leader really needs to be, how do you unleash the power of … hundreds of brains of people that are out there every day doing the work but [who] haven't ever really been asked for their thoughts or inputs or ideas,” Dyer says. “What a horrible waste of a resource.”
