Employee engagement feels elusive… but all you need is to have the right conversations to find out what really drives your team.
I speak for a living. And the biggest question I get when corporations want to bring me in to speak to their audiences is this: “When you get on stage and tell all of my people to go live their best lives, won’t they all quit?”
Well, the answer is, surprisingly, “No.”
Here’s why: I help them fall in love with their jobs all over again.
Magic, right?
Not really.
You see, your employees came to work for you for a reason, and it might not even be a reason you know. It wasn’t just about the skills they’d learn, or the prestige of your company on their resume, or how inspiring of a leader you are, or even the money they are earning. They came to work for you because some part of this job, this brand, this paycheck, this leadership aligned with who they were.
But most likely they lost sight of that along the way. They got buried in email. They got blindsided by staff changes and the effects on their workload. They got silenced by a mid-level manager who reduced their personal agency. They become disengaged.
Only one-third of the U.S. Workforce considers themselves engaged in their work. Consider this along with the fact that engaged workers are 22% more productive for their employers. I’ll let you do the math on how much money you are leaving on the table.
Less employee engagement, less profit. It’s just that simple.
Recruiting employees with the old scorecard of skills acquisition, prestige, leadership, money might still work. But retaining them with the old scorecard doesn’t. You need to let your employees find their consonance — when the “what” they do matches the “who” they are.
And that’s where I describe the four elements of consonance — calling, connection, contribution, and control. It’s the meat of my talk. And it’s the roadmap for your employees to find their way back to being excited and engaged in the work that they do… for you.
Want to have an engaged workforce? Let them find their consonance and be limitless. Sure, you might lose a couple, but you’ll also know how to get the most out of the ones you keep, and recruit for better ones along the way, too.
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