Читать книгу Manage to Engage - Pamela Hackett - Страница 47

Engagement is about people, and wherever people are involved, complexity abounds. So, the aim here is not to prescribe a new management model, but rather to prompt you to see better ways of managing. All too often, we view engagement as an activity – or worse still, the ultimate outcome, when in fact, engagement is the very lifeblood of what should pump through the veins of our organizational DNA. It is the enabler of results, built ubiquitously into our everyday behavior.

In response to talent shortages, or economic fights for survival, and the growing need to build a good brand as an employer, companies have realized that they must now put as much effort into wooing and looking after employees as they do into attracting and nurturing customers. The problem is, leaders have so much coming at them today, they struggle to bring pragmatic people solutions to fruition. Many are wanting to or even hoping they can but falling flat as they try to wrestle the chaos to deliver their day-to-day workloads and engage their people. The two go hand in hand. One begets the other, and that's the problem to solve.

Brand continuity, strategy development, marketing, HR, and operations must come together to bring the employee experience into the same value as we hold the customer experience and shareholder goals.

A lot of work has been done on the customer experience, so now it's time to apply the same effort and innovation to the employee experience: how they experience work in your organization or team. At every level. Because we also know, the underengaged populate every level in the organization. And when we address it, it can't simply be focused on implementing flexible working, bonuses, bean bags, and a ping-pong table, but in making people feel valued, inspired, and enabled to make their mark, so they can bring their best selves to work.

The aim of this book is to help you find a way to that point: where everyone in your organization “gets engaged.” It's a significant journey: an all or nothing experience. There are no degrees of engagement. Just as with safety, you are either safe or you're not; you either have an engaged workforce or you don't. There are no half measures.