EVOLVE - Cultivating Authentic Team Engagement
Have you seen the signs in your team? Withdrawal, poor communication, missing goals and deadlines or do you get the sense they just don’t care? There are always going to be times when we hire someone that is not necessarily the right fit for the business but for those that are the right fit, why would they disengage? How can we reach a point where we have the full cognitive, emotional and behavioural energies alongside their passion and commitment? Will a bowl of communal fruit do the trick?
In 2022 platform Perkbox estimated that employee disconnect was costing the UK economy more than £340bn every year in lost training and recruitment costs, sick days, productivity, creativity and innovation.
The same research also revealed that a disengaged employee was costing their organisation an estimated fifth of their annual salary – for instance, one unengaged worker on an average salary of £35,000 would cost a business £7,000.
It is estimated that three in five employees are disengaged which means if you operate a team of 5, you are potentially losing £16,000 per year. As you grow and scale, this number will increase unless you pay employee engagement the attention it deserves.
A company with which we had the experience to work with, quickly grew over the course of 2-3 years from 0 employees to 60 at the end of year 3, and then all of a sudden growth stagnated. Customers became dissatisfied with ever increasing time lags to receipt of their high-end high value products and the co-founding team were at loggerheads. Even the highly hyped free bowl of fruit for all staff to access did not make a difference to team engagement, shocking! A company that should on paper have become a unicorn became a shadow of what it could have been.
Another company that experienced similar levels of growth had good co-founding relationships, a highly engaged team that actively contributed towards the future growth, innovation and strategy of the business. They have recently closed a round of £10million and are now heading towards a team of 140 by the end of 2024 with profit margins increasing month by month.
What’s the difference between the two companies and what is the winning formula for high levels of employee engagement and retention? Summarised below are the top 5 key tips we have gathered:
Clear expectations and objectives with accountability processes in place
It’s easy to fall into the trap like business A of being woolly with objectives or if you do set objectives failing to hold the team accountable for their actions. Taking time to work on your business and set over-arching goals and then subsequently set and communicate individual employee goals is integral to employee engagement.
These objectives must be clearly communicated, documented and re-visited on a regular basis. Not only does this allow employees to understand where and how they fit into the wider picture, it aligns the employees and their actions with the over-arching business goals.
It will also encourage accountability for those who have potentially fallen off the radar and gives opportunity for open accountability discussions around reasons for missed goals, deadlines or lagging emotional energy or behaviours.
Setting objectives also allows the opportunity to celebrate the successes of your employees and milestones of the business further increasing employee engagement. Reward must not be forgotten, show your employees that they are valued.
2. Show your team the future!
Communicate your vision.
As an entrepreneur, it’s very likely you have a vision for your business in your mind. If you don’t, you need one yesterday! At the point where you have a team or are engaging with partners, suppliers or customers, an excellent vision will drive your business profitability upwards in many ways. To use an analogy, would you go bowling blindfolded and if you did, what would the outcome be?
This analogy applies well to your team, your employees need to visualise where they fit in your equation and where their potential is in the future. They need to be able to see the milestones, the steps the business needs to take to reach its Northern star.
A good vision also allows your employees to consider what development action they need to take over time to reach where they would like to be in your vision. This motivates positive actions and behaviours thus increasing employee engagement.
3. Embrace Difficult Conversations – don’t hide away!
Have you ever avoided having a difficult conversation that you know you should have had? This is a common mindset barrier which as part of entrepreneurial growth you need to overcome.
Having the skill to approach a difficult conversation with an employee integral. Set the tone, that as a business, there is nothing we can’t discuss or handle together whether that’s directly with you or one of the management team, difficult conversations are welcome.
This goes both ways as an employer, you need to be able to challenge employees in the right way and as an employee they should be able to raise challenges with you constructively. Difficult conversations set the foundations for an open, non-toxic environment where problems can be worked on together.
Left unheard, these problems can fester and hinder both employee engagement and business growth. Be prepared for difficult conversations and when they happen, be empathetic and focus on finding a solution and your on your way to creating a problem solving engaged workforce!
4. Find out if you are the bees knees!
How do you know you are an awesome boss? When was the last time you had feedback from your co-founding team or your employees?
Feedback is an integral part of development. If we want to grow and develop our business, you in turn need to grow and develop your skills.
Most entrepreneurs fail to seek invaluable feedback from their team and the most common reason co-founding teams separate is down to ineffective communication. This is an easy fix and will help you to develop into an entrepreneurial super force that can drive your business to great heights! Find out from your team their unbiased (which means you can’t ask them how great you are on a scale of 1-10 to their faces) opinion of you as the leader of your business. Analyse the feedback and take action!
The same applies for co-founding teams, implement measures so that on a regular basis you have regular checkpoints at which time you give open and honest feedback from which changes can be made.
5. Understand and Develop the power of your team
In your team you are guaranteed to have untapped skills and potential and you will not find out what that is unless you spend time understand the strengths and capabilities you have in your workforce. Engage your team in meaningful conversations about the future of your business. What do they see, where do they see themselves? Listen to your team and by listen I mean, really listen to what they want, what are their aspirations and goals.
How do you, where possible, help them to achieve their ambitions whilst they contribute towards the future growth of your business. Who are the secret innovators, motivators, leaders, aspirational speakers, networkers. How are your team energised, do they care about money, are they values driven, are they driven by seeing others succeed? There are lots of tools and techniques out there you can adopt as a business that will open up communication across teams and the wider business that will allow you to uncover these insights and tap into the potential of the team.
In summary, you can implement all the gimmicky tools you want; the fruit bowl, ping pong, monthly drinks but if you want to really engage your employees, from our years of experience of working with entrepreneurs at your stage, you need to go a level deeper.
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