Theme 3

Engage your employees

Bring the best out of your employees

Are your employees fully engaged?

Loyal employees in a company create loyal customers, who in turn create happy

shareholders. The process sounds easy but it’s not, and it has defeated some of the bigger organization of the twentieth

century.

Sir Richard Branson

• What does engaging your employees actually involve?

• What can you do to more fully engage your employees?

• How you can measure employee en-gagement levels over time?

How can you get your employees to consis-tently work to their best?

Chapter 7

Think

What does engaging your em-ployees actually involve?

• Understanding the twelve factors of employee engagement• Understand how to link between culture and engagement• To know the impact of team composition• To clarity facilities engagement• Understanding effective communication builds engagement

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An engaged employee is not only happy in their job but also translated that satisfaction into higher productivity.

Employee engagement involves addressing any issue which impacts on an individual’s ability or willingness to give their all and concerns a range of factors such as individual motivation and commitment, team effectiveness, overall employee satisfaction and productivity.

Employee engagement is primarily concerned with raising the performance of your employees to maximize the contribution that they, individually and collectively, make to the business.

1. The twelve factors of employee engagement

☞ The twelve factors of employee engagement

• In seeking to identify how you can engage your

employees more fully, there’s a long list of things for you to consider.

• It is these twelve factors which combine to create a

working environment where the potential for engagement is higher.

Effective leadership will be at the centre of your ef-forts to engage your employees.

Leaders have the ability to directly influence, in a positive or negative way, how employees feel about where they work.

Unless leadership is strong, engagement will be weak.

2. Leadership, leadership, leadership

culture is a difficult concept to describe but you can sense it, even if you can’t easily explain it in words the culture in your hotel is made up of the things you

believe in, what is acceptable to you in how you operate the business, what your beliefs and values are

and what has become the ‘norm’ over the years.

Culture often has a hidden impact on the daily working environment but it does influence how your employees think and behave; everything you do and how you do it is in some way touched by the culture in your business.

3. The link between culture and engagement

Changing was impossible within this culture as employees were very entrenched and they certainly were not engaged. When local competition increased, the hotel ran into trouble because the prevailing culture didn’t permit it

to quickly respond to new competitive dynamics. Although it is very intangible, culture is a powerful energy force in any business and certain cultures, like the one described above, destroy employee engagement, whilst others encourage it.

The composition of any team determines the likelihood of its success and influences whether the individuals

within it will fully engage. Despite the importance of getting this balance right, some

owners and managers still don’t pay enough attention to their recruitment process. Both are important. Skills are vital, but so too is attitude. You want people who not only can do the job, but who have a ‘can do’ attitude as well.

4. The impact of team composition

You should define both aspirations and expectations Employees must also be very clear as to what you want from them in terms of their performance. If they don’t

know what you expect from them at work, don’t expect them to deliver what you want. Lack of clarity on these issues will affect an employee’s willingness and ability to engage. Defining your aspirations for the hotel and your expectations of them will not on its own increase employee engagement, but it will provide a foundation upon which that engagement can be built.

5. Clarity facilities engagement

It is an obvious requirement that all your employees must be able to do the work they are employed to do, so competence is important issue in its own right. However, it is of specific concern from an engagement

perspective for two reasons. - First, if certain employees are not fully competent at

their jobs, others in the team have to compensate for those weaknesses by picking up the slack.

6. Competence supports engagement

- Second, on a broader scale, most employees want to learn and grow in their jobs, so helping them to build their competence and capabilities also increases their willingness to engage.

Employees move on, that’s life, but they are more likely to engage whilst they are with you, or at least to perform to a higher standard. Making the effort to increase the competence of your employees pays off in a number of ways and is therefore worth doing.

The more that your employees cooperate with one an-other the stronger the team spirit that develops amongst them. Feeling part of a successful team is a proven driver of engagement.

The more you can do to get your employees working and interacting with each other the better, because building

team spirit and cooperation across your hotel will increase engagement.

There is often too strong a focus on “my department” in hotels and you should break down these barriers.

7. Engagement and cooperation are interdependent

◎ Control and engagement may not seem like obvious bedfellows but there is an important relationship be-tween them.

1) Addressing underperformance - Monitoring performance and maintaining discipline are vital concerns, using effective leadership

approaches of course. When individuals who consistently underperform are allowed to do so without correction, this reduces the potential for engagement of others around them who are making the effort.

8. Control and engagement are not enemies

2) Empowering your employees

- The second aspect of control to consider here is the degree to which your employees are empowered at the hotel. People need to feel that they have meaningful in put into decisions which affect them and that they have a degree of autonomy to act on their own initiative.

- Engagement is always higher in an environment where empowerment is strong.

The association between engagement and communication is very strong and where there is open, two-way and

effective communication the levels of employee engagement will always be higher. from an engagement point of view, the structural components of communication are critical. – “nobody tells me anything around here” you should ensure that there are regular social or teambuilding events which are great for stimulating informal communication and lifting morale, which in turn contrib-

utes to increasing the levels of engagement.

9. Effective communication builds engagement

An important factor in determining levels of engagement is how challenging employees believe their work is;

most people eventually get bored doing the same thing day in day out. Once an employee has mastered the needs and demands

of their own particular job, the sense of learning and stimulation can quickly dissipate which reduces their potential for engagement.

10. More challenged means more engaged

Conflict is a feature of all organizations and is normal and indeed sometimes necessary. When conflict at work is poorly managed, it can have detrimental impact on employee engagement. constructive conflict can be positive when it focuses on

issues not personalities. Conflict leads us to challenge each other and as a result we often find better ways of doing things.

11. Conflict and engagement are linked

Constructive conflict should not be stifled, for to do so is to potentially stifle not only creativity but engagement too.

Destructive conflict where it is personality driven, not leading to any benefits, accompanied by damaging

behaviors or creating a negative atmosphere should be dealt with firmly and proactively.

Pay has a role to play, but if engagement was only dependent upon pay then your hands would be tied, as there is always a limit to what you can pay and people always want more. Compensation in the broader sense relates to other issues such as how your employees are rewarded for performance beyond the norm, beginning with a simple thank you right up to structured recognition mechanisms and performance - related pay.

12. Compensation influences engagement

continuity and a degree of certainty are important in any business because too much change can be frustrating for many people, par-ticularly if it isn’t leading to

improvements. constant meaningless change erodes the potential for employees to engage because they simply get fed up of the lack of direction. Change and innovation processes can contribute to improved engagement but only when they are well managed, inclusive, based on solid rationale and lead to improved

working practices or results.

13. Change is a factor in engagement