These days, there’s a great deal of buzz centered on the concept of employee engagement. Time and again, engaged employees have been shown to be more productive, safer, more focused on customers and more likely to stay with an organization.
Experts in workforce engagement have their own formulas for measuring just how engaged (or disengaged) an employee is, but some of the most relevant common themes include:
- Employees know what’s expected of them
- They have equipment and processes that support them in doing their work
- They have the opportunity to do what they do best
- They feel that their opinions matter
- They feel their work is important and makes a difference
- They’re part of a team that values quality
- They have the opportunities to improve their skills and grow in their careers
- They receive both praise and constructive feedback
Disengaged employees often feel that expectations are not clear, that they’re not supplied with the tools or systems they need to perform effectively, that their opinions are undervalued, that they lack opportunities to do what they do best and grow in their careers, and most of all, that that their work is unimportant or doesn’t make a difference.
Engaging your workforce requires not figuring out how to motivate people, but identifying what their internal motivations are, and figuring out how to tap into those motivations. This is becoming increasingly important as younger generations enter the EMS workforce, and leaders realize that today’s younger workers learn — and become engaged — differently than their predecessors did.
Smart leaders will recognize a critical pattern in all of this: The responsibility for employee engagement lies with the organization as much if not more than it does with the employee. Let me be a little more direct: Building an organization with a high level of employee engagement is your responsibility as a leader.
If you don’t do that, you’re going to find yourself losing your best people ... if you haven’t already.
