Successful employee engagement is subjective. True employee engagement is a moving target with an ebb and flow—it’s constantly changing. An employee’s view of employee engagement is based on their last interaction with their manager, hearing the CEO’s company address, or their interaction with HR or the benefits department. Surveying employees twice a year isn’t a dynamic way of measuring true employee engagement.
Employees don’t think of “engagement” like leaders do. Employees know how they “feel” about work, a manager, or a situation. Feelings are subjective and are constantly changing based on circumstances.
Leaders in all departments that lead remote teams continue to struggle with how to define what great employee engagement is. Since engagement is a moving target, especially in the work-at-home environment, adoption of new leadership strategies and skills by leaders is a good approach. Deliberately re-engineering strategies for the virtual work environment is critical.
Here are some ideas to think about:
A Different Kind of Acknowledgment
Employees want to hear that their leaders understand what they are feeling. Employees are also looking for transparency. So if leaders want employees to be engaged, admitting that they may not be meeting the engagement level that the employees are looking for is a good strategy as it will demonstrate a leader’s transparency. It’s okay if leaders don’t have all the answers.
Showcasing Trust
Employees don’t expect leadership to be perfect, but they do expect transparency and honesty from their leaders. This goes a long way toward building trust so employees feel safe to be engaged.
Turn Listening into Action
The people know the answer. Employees know what they need and want to be successful—so ask them. Have team meetings to discuss ideas. Delegate someone from each team meeting to bring those ideas to a larger focus group. Post all the ideas on a discussion board so everyone knows what is going on.
Employees understand that companies can’t do everything they suggest, but acknowledging the ideas—even the crazy ones, like giving everyone a $20,000 bonus—is important. This strategy demonstrates that leadership is listening.
Real Employee Ownership
Let the employees cultivate a few of those ideas, and utilize “pilot programs” to see how those ideas work in the environment as well as how employees like those ideas. Include a once-a-week survey, or utilize a discussion board for comments on each pilot program. When employees own the process, they own the outcome.
Don’t underestimate your employees. Remember, “the people know the answer”—so ask them, and let them showcase their ideas to see how they can positively impact the business.
Not Your Normal Communication
Communicate everything so rumors don’t start. Communicate both the positive and negative. Communicate the “why.” Communicate multiple times a day using multiple channels. This may seem like a huge amount of communication, but engage your teams in the channel(s) they prefer and explain what’s going on. Leadership should consistently do this to build the trust of their employees. Trust is the backbone of employee engagement.
Avoid Damage Control
Yes, this all takes extra time, but leaders will spend the time either way: by being strategic on the front end and making deliberate decisions on how to engage employees or on the back end by doing damage control—less productivity, more performance management, more verbal and written warnings, and more schedule changes.
Leaders end up spending more time talking with employees to get them back on track again. Taking the time to put together a new virtual communication strategy is critical to employee engagement and success.
You Are Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto
Companies are attempting to apply a brick-and-mortar structure to a virtual, work-at-home framework, but it doesn’t work. It never will. How leaders talk with, coach, and engage with employees and how employees interact in their virtual environment all must be re-engineered. Most leaders have been exposed to leading virtually in a remote environment since March of 2020; however, leaders need to evolve their strategies and skills to not only work but thrive in a work-at-home environment.
Vicki Brackett is a contact center industry veteran, a long time CCNG member and regular contributor in member programs and events. Recognized as a subject-matter expert on virtual/work-at-home environments and leadership development, Vicki helps members in a variety of topic areas including innovative and progressive solutions that impact increasing higher CSATs, first call resolution, new agent speed to competency and higher productivity…all while engaging team members and reversing high absenteeism and attrition.
