Top ten tips for effective engagement

1: Make all leaders, managers and supervisors ‘chief engagement officers’
Most employees do not work at the core or pinnacle of a large institution. Most work in small crevices in departments, teams and branches, no matter how famous or large their employer is.
Their local Chief engagement officer is their direct line supervisor with, way up in the heavens, the passing, ethereal figures of top leadership.
All corporate surveys, engagement interventions and engaging communication processes make passing impact compared to the role model of the person they report to.
At every level recruit and develop against our validated set of engagement instincts and capabilities based on personal decision making practices which will liberate the people to engage themselves.

2: Engage people in big ticket change
From time to time and sometimes all the time organizations need to mobilize around strategy and change processes some of which involve loss and pain.
Our research makes it very clear that people have a much better chance of being engaged in day to day operations by supervisors and managers who engage people in decision making than they do when they are (usually) communicated at by messages from the heavens in ‘decide and tell’ or ‘decide and sell’ mode.
The usual objections are that ‘we haven’t time’, ‘they won’t have anything to add’, or ‘it’s my job to take decisions, theirs to act’.
Again the evidence is now compelling for ‘turning the hierarchy upside down’ to drive better, faster strategy and change. Top down change and strategy results in a spectator sport in which the elite shout at the people and the people freeze like rabbits in headlights and are disengaged and unwilling or unable to help.

3: Agree the givens and apply interventions that turn the hierarchy upside down
Gather the sponsor group and negotiate the dimension of ‘the givens’ of any situation where employees need to adapt to change. Seek to expand the boundaries of influence that wider groups of employees can have on the end result.
Think of a peach with its stone in the middle, the challenge is to reduce the size of the stone – the givens, and increase the size of the fruity flesh – the invitation or license for others to contribute.
The peach should precipitate the design of interventions which give some or much of the work to those affected and ultimately everyone whether it is strategy, change or recovery.
Through rational negotiation the elements considered ‘untouchable’ will shrink, the senior team will coalesce, they will share a story or narrative about the strategy and, crucially, they will define the boundary of engagement for their people to contribute.

4: Create citizen readiness
People won’t engage themselves until they believe the invitation and feel safe to change the pattern from parent child to adult to adult.
Communication about the strategy must be starkly candid revealing the heights and depths in a competitive context.
Rituals like leadership meetings must be new, fresh and full of surprise. Top level role models must be chief engagement officers and become guides not gods.

5: Fired up or fizzled out?
Many of these processes can fizzle out after the leadership meeting closes. The keys to long life are an absolutely transparent progress and governance process which constantly celebrates progress, acknowledges difficulty and most of all makes execution teams publicly accountable.
A good solution is a visible, on-line, self reporting progress process based on a common framework from teams responsible for different aspects of the change/improvement initiatives, accompanied by a quarterly refresh process.

6: Employ high speed mass digital engagement

First mover organisations are engaging their people using digital technology that enables them to get input and wisdom from thousands or selected groups in very short order. Create on-line networks, experiment with the technologies and overcome resistance from IT specialists or security officianados who may put barriers in your path.
Be a first mover in adopting bundling technology that is allowing exec teams, CEOs and change teams to hold a discourse with their chosen audience that encourages massive levels of feedback which is electronically clustered and boiled down to a few distinct themes which the sponsor team can address more or less in real time.

7: Align communication with the engagement agenda
Engagement is not turbo charged communication, but communication certainly has an important role to play in enabling effective engagement. Ensure your communication experts work in tandem with your engagement specialists in promoting and pursuing your engagement approach. Marry up the communication experience so that the tone, style and approach is consistent with the engagement experience you aim to engender.
Consider the different but complementary nature of engagement and communication – see following chart.

8: Help everyone see the value of their role
Ensure your organisation’s ambition is well communicated and its route to get there – it’s strategy, is well articulated and widespread. Help people see and understand how their role, their job and their work is contributing to the end game. Help them sense their purpose, help them connect with the goal and they will engage with the intent.

9: Don't believe that survey

Many organisations are almost impervious social systems. Even where there are good engagement scores many people simply have no idea what effective engagement feels like unless they happen to work for a progressive organization. Thus they typically overrate their organisations efforts to engage them and management is deluded and flattered by beating the competition. Switch to regular issue based sample polls.

10: Make your people community change experts

A strong driver of employee engagement is company sponsored community involvement by employees.
To increase your peoples’ confidence and esteem invite them to offer their learning about corporate change to chosen community projects. The learning will be reciprocal.
Engage for Change is the leading advisor to corporations and public-sector institutions on the best ways to engage leaders and employees to drive day-to-day performance, operational change and business transformation. They are the leaders in Employee Motivation & Engagement .