6 Ways to Create an Engaged Workforce

6 Ways to Create an

Engaged Workforce:

How Employee Engagement Supports Company Innovation

Behavior #1 - Know Yourself  

Know yourself – perhaps the most important principle of self-direction. An injunction as old as time but as fresh today as four hundred years ago, Shakespeare wrote: "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

At the heart of self-direction lies self-awareness. There are a number of ways that we increase our self-awareness. We can reflect upon our successes and failures and come to understand more clearly our strengths and weaknesses. We are able to explore personal and professional relationships and eventually learn which are productive for us and which aren’t. We might respond to questionnaires hoping to receive some systematic information about our self-perceptions. All of these approaches are valid and can be highly productive. However, it’s also important to consider other peoples' perception of us.

One of the most powerful ways of increasing our understanding of ourselves is, in fact, to find out how others see us. Although from time to time others may give us feedback on how they think and feel about us, they seldom provide that feedback in an effective way designed to change behavior.

Behavior #2 - Do Meaningful Work

Most of us spend more of our adult lives working than we do engaging in any other single waking activity. We spend more time working than we do with our family and friends. We spend more time at work than we do in all of our eating and recreational time put together. Yet study after study shows that significant numbers of people don’t like (and some even hate) their jobs and, if given the chance, would choose some other career path.

Years ago, most work was boring, repetitious, and sometimes even brutal, so a negative attitude toward work was certainly understandable. And of course, plenty of such jobs are still around. But in today’s business world, this method of job creation is no longer appropriate. Work has become an increasingly important vehicle for self-pride and fulfillment.

Still even today there are far too many men and women who have failed or refused to follow the path toward professional purpose and productivity, what Joseph Campbell refers to in his works as "bliss." The closer the match between the employee as a person and the interpersonal demands placed on them by their work, the more they will find work to be a source of meaning and significance. To do meaningful work, there must be a connection between the person and the job.

Behavior #3 - Be Part of the Solution

Successful problem solving is essential to successful self-direction. Problem solving is best understood as the process of changing the way things are now to the way we would like them to be. Since successful self-direction requires us to live up to our full human potential, at its heart lies the process of changing the way we are now to the way we would like to be. This allows employees to become fully engaged in their personal and professional lives.

There was a time when most people weren’t expected to be problem solvers; instead they were expected to turn to an external authority for a problem's solution: a boss or an expert; to tradition, the rules, or even "the way we’ve always done stuff around here."

Business demands require that we solve problems on our own. While not denying the value and importance of external expertise, successful organizations will try to transfer that expertise to the individual employee through extensive training, and then expect that employee to be self-directing and become part of the solution.

Behavior #4 - Manage Conflict Productively

Conflicts, like problems, are a fact of life. Sometimes we find ourselves in conflict with others because we disagree about:

• A situation–our perceptions about the way the world "really" is.

• The target–what we feel the world "should" look like. Or,

• A proposal–the "best" approach to get from here to there.

We sometimes find ourselves experiencing so-called "personality conflicts," often disagreeing with, not understanding, or just plain not liking certain other people in our lives. It could be a co-worker, a vendor, or even a supervisor.

Again, years ago, we could often look to an external authority figure to resolve our conflicts. There was always a boss, an expert, even a friend or family member more than willing to tell us what to do. Today however, we are increasingly expected to manage our own conflicts without the option of including such authority figures.

By being aware of the possibility of apparent conflict, we can focus our problem-solving efforts on the area where real conflict exists. Real conflict means that disagreement does exist about what the situation is, what the solution ought to look like, or what action should be taken to resolve the problem. In the case of real conflict, self-directed employees can utilize the problem-solving models to gain some direction in resolving conflict.

Behavior #5 - Learn How to Learn

Self-direction begins with self-awareness. That self-awareness is followed by a set of specific skills: job skills, problem-solving skills, or conflict management skills. A very strong case, however, could be made that the most important self-direction behavior is the skill of learning how to learn. The accomplishment of that skill may well make all the others possible.

We are faced with the challenge of learning almost daily. Knowledge is doubling exponentially and, as the world becomes more technologically connected, the possibilities of new learning will increase tremendously.

We can no longer afford to muddle through on our way to new knowledge and new skills. Or rely on others to tell us what we need to know and when we need to know it. Once employees understand how to become effective learners, they can increase their skill and comfort in those areas they enjoy and find alternatives when presented with learning activities that aren’t favorites.

Behavior #6 - Manage to Change

The answer to this behavior lies in the concluding statement of John C. Cavanaugh's research into the nature and causes of adult change: "Adults appear to remain the same unless they perceive a need to change." That's the reason why significant life experiences cause us to change; they create, sometimes quite painfully, an awareness of the need to change.

Self-direction creates an awareness of the need for, or possibility of, change. Employees are able to look at themselves and begin identifying the changes they might wish to consider making in such areas as work, problem-solving, conflict management, and learning.

As we manage to change by learning to use the behaviors associated with our preferred ways of thinking and acting, we will find ourselves feeling frustrated less frequently. At the same time, we accomplish the objectives of productivity and meaning associated with our preferred skill and sensitivities. In Erich Fromm's terms, you will come to make fuller and fuller use of your personal and professional powers. You will come to more fully realize your inherent potential.

In Summary

The greatest challenge of the future is social, not technological. In the excitement generated by the latest technological marvels, from fiber optics to the Internet, to new drugs and medical breakthroughs, we tend to forget that our major problems are people problems.

It’s almost a cliché to say that technology has outstripped our ability to manage it, but it’s our willingness as a society and as human beings to manage technology that will largely determine the quality of our business and economic innovations.

Additionally, if the challenge of the future is social, it’s also personal. The social transformation needed to solve the problems of today and tomorrow is, at its heart, a personal transformation. As we change ourselves, we in fact change our businesses and our world.

In order to direct the incredible innovations, ideas, and challenges of our world, we must first direct ourselves. The organizations in which we live and work are becoming radically different from the way they were in more stable and secure times. To survive and thrive in those organizations requires some fundamentally new behaviors on our part.

We hope this whitepaper has prompted ideas and insights leading your organization toward creating the open and self-directed workforce that will help your business reach its operational goals.