What is a good way to involve my employees in the process for improving engagement?
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First, it’s important to communicate early and often so employees understand that their engagement is a priority for your agency. As leaders, you are responsible and accountable for your agency’s engagement, but you can’t do it alone. It is incumbent on your managers and your individual employees to contribute to overall organizational engagement. Here are some ideas to consider:
- Employees like to know their feedback matters. Work with your communication team to track and publicize a record of your commitments made and kept (i.e., “You said, We did.”)
- Once you have identified your leadership approach to improving engagement, make it an actionable plan with activities that can be managed and tracked, on team huddle boards for example.
- Involve and leverage your “influencers” - respected colleagues who are good examples of engaged behavior.
- Make employee engagement an intentional part of regular manager/employee 1:1 conversations.
- Organize and conduct intersectional focus groups or engagement teams to cross pollinate ideas and encourage interaction outside the usual organizational silos.
- Celebrate successes! Improving engagement is a never-ending goal, even for highly engaged teams. Engagement must be a core feature of your agency’s culture. It should never feel like a “bolt-on” or extra work.