Research has proved the obvious: passionate and highly engaged employers are much more productive. However, only about one third of employees are really truly engaged. Remember, passion is personal and not everyone is born passionate. Start showing that you are passionate, suggests the management.about.com website.
Get to know the people you want to ignite
Although many leaders and managers think that employee engagement is the result of providing purposeful, meaningful work and opportunities for development, the truth is that there is no universal engagement formula. Leaders should understand their employees in their complexity, meaning they need to know not only their strengths and skills, but also values. Without profound knowledge of an individual your attempts to boost his engagement are doomed and success will be random at best.
Monthly 1-1 session can help. Do it right now, grab a paper and plan 60 minutes sessions with each of your employees. The 60 minutes is about them. Show them your commitment to get to know them and their potential. The outcome will be that you will be able to offer them the right opportunities for their development. In addition to these sessions you may want to adopt an assessment tool to reinforce the results.
Pick the passionate ones… and ignite them
Some people will never be passionate employees, because they simply aren’t passionate about anything. If you have a very skilled employee who is constantly demonstrating disengagement, then you have to decide whether you want to have a team full of only passionate workers or tolerate those employees with skill but lower engagement.
How do you treat employees who have the potential to be passionate? First, ensure that they are doing what they love, not solely what are they good at. It is not always the same thing. Second, be there for your employees. Provide support and recognize their efforts. Recognition should be individualized, as we have learned in earlier articles.
Practical examples of how to manage employee engagement are available for you to read in our previous article Employee Engagement: Tips from SABMiller.
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