Managers
As organizations have flattened and managers have been asked to do more with less, the people component of the job has grown more complex. And it shows: according to the Gallup Management Journal's semi-annual Employee Engagement Index, only 29 percent of employees are truly engaged. The majority of workers are not. Are these the people you want talking with your customers, responsible for quality and safety, developing new products and services, and building the infrastructure for your company's future success?
Even if 40 percent are actively engaged—which is as much as you could expect—they must work harder to drag the rest of the company, dissatisfied and disengaged, to overall high performance.
The truth is that managers have the greatest influence over employee engagement and retention. In Ridge's People Skills and People Styles training, managers learn to re-engage employees and reconnect them to their work by:
-
Listening to problems, concerns, and different perspectives
-
Solving problems effectively and empowering employees in the process of clarifying issues and coming up with solutions
-
Reinforcing business goals, clarifying expectations, troubleshooting issues that get in the way of productivity
-
Confronting poor performance
-
Adapting to differences in working style to reduce tension and create synergy
-
Getting to the other side of conflict, where people tackle vital issues together
-
Constructing a framework for employee development which recognizes strengths and potential, while targeting areas for improvement
Copyright 2008 Ridge Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.