In this Hot Topic, we will explore new ways in which you can champion employee engagement in the digital workplace, whilst also illuminating the challenges associated with personalising the work experience in an increasingly virtual working world.
Engage your Employees’ Brain
Recent research suggests that understanding the brain may in fact hold the key to positively influencing levels of workplace engagement. Through understanding the brain’s evolution as well as its needs and fears, we as leaders and managers can shape the working environment accordingly, to ensure our employees remain happy, healthy, and ultimately engaged in their working practices. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to read through detailed textbooks on neurological science to understand the inner works of the employee brain. Instead, you can quite simply ensure your employees always have a SCARF.
Understand five insights about the brain to strengthen inspirational leadership:
Safety- The brain is hard-wired to search for threat, particularly when we are placed in an unfamiliar environment. To ensure your employees feel safe in their digital environment we may need to extend the regularity of interactions and provide sufficient training in digital processes.
Certainty- The brain craves certainty. Ensure your employees have a clear understanding of exactly what is going on and limit any unnecessary surprises or changes to their daily routine.
Autonomy- The brain looks for opportunities. Provide your employees with a sense of freedom in their work so they feel liberated by the digital environment as opposed to constrained by it.
Relatedness- The brain needs companionship and looks for safety and security from others. Be creative and think of ways in which you can champion social processes in an environment many may perceive as antisocial (NOTE: this does not simply mean more Zoom meetings).
Fairness- The brain is very perceptive to fairness and injustice. Be conscious of how you are interacting with your employees and ensure there is full transparency across the organisation. Remember, even though we are not all sitting together in an office, it must still be clear for everyone to see that you are not playing favourites.
Help Your Employees Locate their North Star
At the heart of employee engagement is a deep feeling of connection with our organisation’s vision and an alignment to its core values. To achieve this connection, however, leaders must first help their employees locate and pursue their North Star – a compelling personal vision, comprising of personal strengths, values, and professional aspirations, which guides and inspires.
Through ensuring our organisation’s and employees’ North Stars are aligned, we as managers and leaders can help shape an innovative climate, whereby company and individuals are all united by the pursuit of a common and meaningful goal.
Consider these five processes (and five important questions) when attempting to help your employees discover their North Star.
1. Be Ambitious: Who do your employees strive to be? If we want to promote engagement, we need to encourage employees to continually strive to be the best versions of themselves.
The Key Question: “What does your ‘best self’ look like and what do you need to get there?”
2. Establish What’s Unique: Your employees need to understand what value they can bring to the organisation in its continued pursuit of excellence and innovation.
The Key Question: “If you were in a room with five other people who possess equal qualifications, what do you have that makes you stand out?”
3. Get Morbid: If your employees struggle to articulate their vision, encourage them to think about how they would like to be remembered when they are gone. This will help uncover core values.
The Key Question: “Imagine someone speaking at your funeral. What do you want them to say about what you stood for or what was important to you?”
4. Uncover the “WHY”: As well as encouraging a verb (what do they want to do?), target (where do they want to get to?) and outcome (what will be achieved by getting there?) approach, it’s important our employees can articulate not only what their North Star is, but why they have chosen it.
The Key Question: Quite simply “What is your ‘Why’?
5. Align the Stars: How does your employees’ vision align with that of the organisation? Make sure there is congruence between your employees’ and organisation’s North Star.
The key Question: “What can we do ensure alignment between your North Star and the North Star of the organisation?”
Action Point
Reflect on your own organisation’s North Star and consider ways in which you can ensure your organisation’s and employees’ North Stars can become more closely aligned.