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Creating Employee Engagement, Part 4

This is the final part of a 4 part series on Creating Employee Engagement. You can first read Parts 1, 2, and 3.

Skills Required for Engagement

Skill gaps to create engagement exist both in employees and managers, although most transformation efforts tend to focus on only one or the other group.

Employees need to be able to able to identify problems. Have you ever walked into a team and asked “what problems do you have?” and received the answer “no problems.” Well, gee, I’ve been here 5 minutes and spotted 3, how do you have no problems? Not only do them need to be able to spot problems and opportunities, but do so consistently with other teammates.

Team members must be able to engage in brainstorming, experimentation, and communication to be able to develop, share, and decide on solutions to problems. The ability to work with your teammates in a productive way to determine solutions is more than just having the opportunity to contribute. Skills make this succeed or fail.

To be able to support others in idea development and execution, you must be willing and able to:

• Listen
• Give feedback
• Share a common language of processes and ideas

To be able to contribute your own ideas, an individual must be able to:

• Identify waste and opportunity in their work
• Be able to study and find causes of problems and gaps
• Able to develop solutions that are creative and affordable
• Communicate ideas to others

Engagement is one of the major differentiators for companies in the years to come. Organizations shouldn’t be working on it to win some “best places to work” awards. They should work on developing engagement because the ideas of many can outrun the ideas of a few, and your organization can use every advantage it can find.