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Behind every worker – including you – is a unique combination of motivations. It gets you up in the morning when you would rather stay in bed. It keeps you coming back to work when you would rather quit. It makes you want to do better than you did yesterday, to be better.

For some people, they work in order to provide for their families, to send their kids to colleges, to care for aging parents, or to put food on the table while their spouses pursue educational ambitions. For others, they appreciate the mental or physical challenge, the opportunity to travel, or are personally passionate about the subject matter. Or, perhaps, they genuinely enjoy their colleagues and their managers, and that's enough to keep them coming back day after day.

Though the why behind each worker differs, the desire for professional engagement is universal.

Given the individuality of motivation, however, how are companies supposed to engage their workforces at large? How can they build and develop cultures that advance both organizational goals and the individual goals of every worker? It's not easy, but it is possible. And this book shows you how.

The topic of employee engagement and workplace cultures is not new. In fact, in recent years, it seems like every corporate blogger, speaker, and consultant touts the importance of culture and employee engagement. Theoretical discussions abound, but few people have put forth concrete strategies that help get you from point A (unengaged) to point B (fully engaged). The workplace is evolving so rapidly, in fact, that employees are feeling less and less engaged with their work. Collectively, we are in the midst of an engagement crisis. The only way out is to focus on people over processes, real engagement over cookie-cutter programs, consistent intentionality over passive manipulation, and healthy change over rigid planning. For those already familiar with technology management philosophies, what we are suggesting is the application of agile principles to the world of employee engagement.

People, and consequently employees, are extremely complex. There is not a single set of engagement rules that can be outlined during your company launch party that are guaranteed to still work at by the time you reach your 10-year anniversary. People change. Companies change. Your approach must change alongside them. And you must involve employees in the process.

Enter Agile Engagement, which provides practical advice and counsel to demystify engagement and culture. We wrote this book to dramatically impact the way the world works and the way we all work within it. We wrote this book as a way to apply the proven principles of agile software development to the world of employee engagement. Most of all, we wrote this book to help heighten the level of engagement for all workers – not only managers, not only white-collar, and not only high-tech workers. All workers.

For engagement is, at its core, the great equalizer.

True engagement can be attained (and sustained) by anyone, anywhere, doing anything. However, engagement doesn't just happen. It requires intentionality, strategic workplace culture building, an employee engagement plan that is unique to your organization and your workers, and a commitment to continuous measure and improvement.

In the following pages, we will help you understand the importance of engagement and workplace culture. Moreover, we will give you a proven framework within which to create, build, and execute your engagement strategy over the long haul. We call this framework the Engagement Canvas and it leverages the powerful Emplify Score tool.

Agile Engagement Framework

The framework we utilize infuses agile principles throughout the employee engagement process. Consistent and frequent measurement of employee engagement reveals real insights that then guide engagement strategies and action plans. This process repeats itself, because the opportunity to drive engagement should be an unending pursuit.

The Engagement Canvas is our answer to a troubling trend we noticed in the course of our work. We talked with many executives and HR leaders who told us that culture was a key aspect of their companies' future successes. They painstakingly explained how seriously they took employee engagement. Then, when we asked those same business leaders to describe their cultures (current and desired)…crickets. More troubling, when we asked how they were cultivating their workplace culture and driving employee engagement, we received blank stares.

Mind you, these business leaders are highly successful businessmen and businesswomen in their respective fields. They have mastered complex supply chain issues, cross-market campaign difficulties, technical security challenges, and more. But when it came to culture and engagement, they were comparatively dumbfounded. Try as they might, they did not understand how to construct an engagement strategy or measure success.

Engagement is too important for such widespread confusion. We are on a mission to provide the clarity organizations so desperately need. Alongside us on this journey are our guest contributors, both operational and strategic leaders, who provide their insights, commitment to, and appreciation for workplace culture and employee engagement. Spanning a variety of industries, company sizes, and geographies, these culture gurus prove that powerful engagement is not only achievable but well worth the effort.

We also provide our own insights gained from professional careers spent launching, forming, and perpetuating powerful company cultures. We originally met at ExactTarget, a fast-paced Midwest-based, technology company. ExactTarget epitomized a thriving culture with highly engaged employees. The culture was branded “Orange” after the company's primary brand color (Pantone 144). We experienced firsthand the importance of making culture a priority and saw the business impact of truly engaged employees. An exceptional culture was the driving force behind the company's successful initial public offering, listing on the New York Stock Exchange, and ultimate $2.5 billion sale to tech juggernaut Salesforce.com.

ExactTarget veteran and now Yext chief marketing officer Jeff Rohrs explained the experience this way:

I was involved in the initial conception of “Be Orange” at ExactTarget, an effort to give our culture, passion, commitment, talent, and energy a name. Having that effort tie into our core brand color – and having that color represent the best of who we wanted to be – helped everyone understand what culture meant within our organization.

Another key was not having Marketing or HR solely own culture. It was owned by our people, and they added so many great ideas and activities to the expression of our culture that every engaged employee felt a sense of ownership. Having the shorthand of what “Being Orange” meant even helped accelerate our hiring efforts by making it easier to evaluate people for key skills that were needed to work in an organization where change was a constant. (Rohrs, 2016).

Former ExactTarget vice president of global total rewards, talent, and HR operations and current Appirio senior vice president, human resources, Ellen Humphrey remembers the Orange culture with similar fondness:

We had an engaging and exciting culture at ExactTarget because (a) we were transparent about the business and its goals; (b) we empowered everyone to live out our culture; (c) our employees believed that our senior leaders lived out the culture; and (d) we were winning in our space. I think winning makes a big difference. Our employees were proud to be part of a company that was growing, landing the big customers, and opening new offices. The collective momentum attracted high-caliber talent, which led to more winning, which continued to engage employees, which kept the culture amped, which attracted more talent. Rinse and repeat. (Humphrey, 2016)

What we experienced at ExactTarget was so special that we wanted to help more organizations experience the power of culture and engagement to drive business results. So we joined forces and created a mobile-first employee engagement app software-as-a-service platform called Emplify. We help companies develop and implement engagement strategies through the use of native, branded, mobile apps. With our employee engagement platform, employers can finally foster a deeper level of employee engagement and measure their success in real time.

As you continue reading, remember that culture and employee engagement are components of – not replacements for – good ol' business results. Terri Kelly, president and chief executive officer of W. L. Gore & Associates, explains that “If you're not careful, the culture can become the outcome and become disconnected from achieving the desired business result. The culture needs to be the ‘how’ you achieve results, and you must continue to monitor and evolve your practices and values to ensure there is strong alignment to achieving the business outcomes” (Kelly, 2016).

Cheers to the start (or continuation) of your workplace culture and employee engagement journey. We are here to serve as your guides, and we look forward to helping you unlock the potential that comes from having truly engaged employees and a winning culture.