Leadership and Engagement – why is this important?
What are you doing to develop your managers? Are they representing leadership from the front? Gallup have conducted research into employee engagement over 30 years. Gallup’s Q12 survey is also considered the most effective measure of employee engagement.
Further more, you now don’t need to purchase the Q12 survey, or other employee engagement surveys to measure employee engagement. I’ve worked in organisations who did conduct employee surveys. Surveys can be detrimental to employee engagement, but very little is done with the information
In order to ensure your business continues to succeed, it’s important you have a great idea of what your business looks like in the present and the future. In addition, ensuring your employees are engaged can also be the best way to achieve this. This is also how you can get the best out of your people this year. Why not link the 12 questions from Gallup and ask them to your own business?
What are the 12 questions?
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
This question is a simple way to find out exactly what your employees think. It’s important that all of your employees know what’s expected of them at work and if they don’t, it’s crucial you work on this. Let staff know when they are doing a great job. This is a great way to help employees understand what you are looking for in an employee and make them feel positive about their achievements. Not only does this change behaviours for the better, it also helps you to recognise the employees who aren’t willing to take their responsibilities seriously. To work on this as a manager, have regular, meaningful conversations about what is expected of employees. In addition, this is a great way to improve leadership.
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
You may have hard-working employees who know exactly what is expected of them but don’t have the equipment needed to work to the best of their ability. It’s amazing what poor facilities and equipment can do to employee engagement. You can improve this by encouraging employees to bring office issues to your attention. This can be done through email or a suggestion box. Offering a small voucher to the best suggestion each month can be a great way for employees to get involved.
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
This question is a great way to find out what your team enjoys and what motivates them everyday. It will also help you to identify employee strengths. If you delegate work to employees who enjoy it, it will be completed to a higher standard.
Encourage your managers to have regular meetings with staff to discuss what part of their job they are enjoying and what they don’t enjoy as much. This way, you’ll have a motivated team that will complete tasks to the best of their abilities.
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Recognition and praise is a way to create a more engaging and happy working environment. Gallup have added seven days to the question deliberately as it’s very recent. In addition, team members should be able to identify a time they were praised for their work right away.
One way to encourage recognition and praise is to leave a nominations box in the office where staff and managers can nominate someone for their hard-work. Nominations can be counted and handed out to the employee to show them they are doing a great job. The employee with the most nominations can even win a prize. Alternatively, you can encourage your managers to set up regular meetings with staff to give feedback and improve leadership.
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
This question can tell you a lot about your managers. If your employees don’t feel like a valued member of the team, this is a big problem. To improve this, encourage managers to regularly engage with staff, ask them how they are, what their plans are for the weekend and how they are getting on with their work.
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
Development can be key to retaining good employees. In addition, management must put a lot of time and effort in to this. This question will not only help you to identify management’s coaching abilities, it will also help you to recognise what you need to work on. If development is proving to be an issue in your organisation, you can invest in training for your management team to improve their coaching skills.
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
It’s important your employees feel heard. It can be very frustrating when you feel that you have great ideas to progress the business but feel your ideas are not being valued. It’s important to give everyone the opportunity to share their opinion throughout daily and weekly meetings to feel like a valued member of the team. This will lead to staff feeling more positive about their role, build morale and promote great leadership.
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
Everyone wants to feel like they have a purpose and their role is important. If your staff don’t feel this way, this is a big problem. It’s time to think about how you can make the workplace feel more meaningful and motivate your team to re-discover their purpose.
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
There’s nothing worse than being in an office that is surrounded by people who are negative and lack commitment. It can be frustrating when you are working harder than everyone else but getting payed the same wage. In addition, regularly remind your employees where you want to take the business in the future and remind them of the quality of work that you expect. This will help you to work out who are the hard workers and who doesn’t strive to achieve high quality work.
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
This is a really interesting question from the Gallup Q12. Furthermore, this relates to the link between high performing teams and having a close friend at work. If an employee feels they have someone they can trust at work who will always have their back, this will make them feel happier within their role. You can encourage your employees to build positive relationships by setting up regular team building days.
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
Only meeting up with your employees once a year to discuss their progress is a waste of time. A year is a very long time and a lot happens in this. In addition, it’s very hard to give someone an accurate evaluation of progress. We encourage all of our clients to try and set up a one-to-one with their employees to give a more accurate evaluation of progress.
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
Development and training is an important aspect of engaging and retaining quality staff. In addition, If your employees feel they aren’t getting the opportunity to develop their skills, there’s more of a chance of them moving on. Encourage your staff to take part in training courses and training to also help them feel they are progressing.
Driving Engagement Through Leadership
To measure the effectiveness of your leadership team, you should be testing your managers on the above questions. If they are ensuring your staff can answer these questions positively, then you will have good levels of engagement. If you’re serious about improving the performance of your team, you need to be holding these conversations with your managers. This shouldn’t be difficult, and if you have an in-house HR resource, they could be carrying out this for you.
For more information, contact us at The HR Booth on 01383 668178 or email us through our website.