Joe comes to work. He is on time. He punches the clock, stays at his desk, takes his lunch break, and at the end of the day, Joe goes home.
For some managers, Joe is the perfect employee. He’s always present and accounted for.
Trouble is, Joe is only at his desk; in attendance but disengaged.
1 in 3 employees work like Joe.
Statistically speaking, 35% of employees disengage from work.
How much damage could a guy like Joe do in your workplace?
If you make 10 new hires this year — without changing how you build your teams — you have a 35% chance of paying someone to not contribute to the health and wellness of your organization.
Scary!
In 2019, an astonishing 43% of global high-growth companies view “low or declining employee engagement” as the top risk facing the future of work.
Companies perceive low engagement as a higher risk than inadequate diversity, leadership pipeline development, and signs of lagging productivity.
The future of work hangs in the balance while 1 in 3 employees disengage to play Fortnite and dream about the weekend.
What if we could dramatically shift our employee engagement? What if Joe could help his company succeed?
Employees crave clarity
Clear expectations and a correspondingly high level of clear communication are among the top factors influencing increased employee engagement.
Clarity is about more than communication.
Clarity is about purpose, goals, and the desire to be part of a thriving team.
Since the Romans started building roads, workers have sought specific instructions and detailed plans for success. Everyone wants to play on the winning side.
Yet, in our rush to complete daily tasks, we often overlook a simple lesson we got from playing LEGO as children.
While LEGO is not specifically made to promote employee engagement, the connectable bricks certainly keep masses of children captivated and occupied.
LEGO gives a clear goal in every box. A road map to winning.
The instruction manual is the key to success
There is clarity around an expected finished product — for example, a castle, an airplane, or a pirate ship — and also an ongoing step-by-step guide.
The instructional guide offers microfeedback
Bite-sized chunks of immediately applicable instruction which move a person or a project further toward success.
When you’re making the LEGO castle and you’re unsure about the next step, you look to see if what you hold in your hand matches the picture on paper.
The instructions offer immediate affirmation of a completed task — “Yes, mine looks the same” — and clarifies the next step for success — “Oh, here’s what piece I now need.”
Bite-sized chunks of immediately applicable instruction which move a person or a project further toward success.
Think back to Joe, and to the 35 percent just like him who disengage at work.
What would bite-sized affirmation and clarity of future success do for Joe’s workplace engagement?
Harvard Business Review calls Microfeedback “performance assessment for Twitterholics — succinct and nearly real time.”
Instead of waiting for an end-of-year review, Joe could hear this week, or this month, how his performance influences ongoing projects.
Like LEGO, Microfeedback helps employees to know if they’re on the right track.
The ability of microfeedback to offer real-time affirmation in small doses sets it apart from other engagement initiatives.
Microfeedback works because it is bite-sized and consistent.
Karma bot is a prime example of microfeedback in action.
Microfeedback on chats
Karma bot focuses on building teamwork through chat platforms. Users post “karma” to co-workers allowing teams to see the positive impact their work effort has on overall goals.
A chatbot that collects and processes in-chat data to build comprehensive performance reports and improve people culture. It lifts up the team morale while providing valuable insights for the leaders. — Stas Kulesh, Karma bot
Karma bot also allows managers to track individual users assessing how their performance is influencing team dynamics.
Build better teams: Offer bite-sized clarity around success and improvement.
Microfeedback is about improvement. Positive, consistent, improvement.
With Karma bot, your team gains the ability to offer an immediate response coupled with useful detail. Improve today, not tomorrow.
Globally, 32% of companies survey their employees regarding workplace engagement at least twice a year. Yet only a third of those same companies analyse what drives engagement.
While it’s great to have a summer BBQ, and a yearly off-site gathering, these events do not keep team members engaged on a rainy Thursday afternoon.
Look around you at work. People want to succeed. They want to head home knowing they’ve contributed to a winning organization.
Don’t let employee engagement remain a mystery in the workplace. Utilize microfeedback to create clarity and reinforce recognition.
Put positive microfeedback at the core of how your teams interact.
Try it online with Karma bot for Slack or MS Teams — post a little karma to your team. It’s free.
What impact would giving consistent bite-sized affirmation have on employee engagement in your teams?
How much more would people work with discretionary effort knowing someone else will notice their work and offer an affirmative comment?
SOURCES:
Aon plc. (2017). 2018 trends in global employee engagement. Retrieved from https://www.aon.com/2018-global-employee-engagement-trends/index.html
HR.com. (2018). The state of employee engagement in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.hr.com/en/resources/free_research_white_papers/the-state-of-employee-engagement-in-2018-leverage-_jeqfvgoq.html
Kulesh, S., (2018, June 13). Karma bot for Microsoft teams. Retrieved from https://medium.com/karmabot/karma-bot-for-microsoft-teams-1b8f2bd60fd3
Mercer. (2019). Global talent trends 2019. Retried from https://www.mercer.com.au/our-thinking/global-talent-trends.html
Meister, J. C., & Willyerd, K. (2010, May). Mentoring Millennials. Harvard Business Review, 1–4.