It's no secret that businesses rely on their employees in order to function. Without trustworthy employees, the business would never be able to produce enough products or content to keep afloat. On top of this, there are some employees who are so integral to a company that if they were to leave, the business would lose a lot of money. The same would happen if they were to tragically die which is why a lot of companies take out insurance policies on their key workers to ensure they won't struggle financially, should anything happen -- for more information, click here. But what can you do if your employees aren't being very productive? How can you get them performing to the best of their ability?

The topic of employee engagement or perhaps the lack thereof is a topical issue that seems to be part of a lot of conversations. As a leader in an organization where you do not appear to have a good handle on the issue it is far easier to ignore the problem. One must think about that decision as lack of engagement in addressing the problem is not much better than being a disengaged employee yourself.

There can be many ways employee engagement can be improved, not only on a one on one basis physically but through the use of business software like Profit.co that can encourage employees to keep up to date and be helped through by their employer in an effective manner. It should be understood that employee programs can give employees an incentive to work harder and by not only improving your business but also, increasing the happiness of your staff. Programs like an expansion of strengthening employee relationships, job benefits, focusing on employee engagement, etc., could go a long way to benefit the employees and in turn, your customers. Employee engagement may include icebreaker questions for work, solving puzzles, games, trivia etc., that can help the team bond better.

I recently attended a breakfast briefing and panel discussion hosted by the David Aplin Group and the Canadian Management Centre. This was one of those – you can't miss this session events! If you get the chance to attend one of their events do not miss the opportunity. They provided us some insight into leadership and employee engagement. One of my first observations was that this was a session that more leaders could have attended. It was great to have a Canadian perspective to support what some of us have been saying all along but relying on sources from other jurisdictions such as the United States or the international market as a whole.

What I found quite interesting was the linkage of lack of trust and confidence in our leaders to employee engagement. Of the average Canadian employee, only 39% of them trust their leader(s). Only 44% of the employees have confidence in their leader(s). Human Resource practitioners have a slightly higher trust and confidence level but they too have their concerns.

If you take this information and then look at Canadian employees as to engaged, moderately engaged and not engaged you will start to see a pattern of sorts forming – unless of course, you have acquired the ostrich syndrome! It is surprising what we miss when our heads are buried in the sand – we see and hear nothing and everything is just rosy! When you look at your workforce only 27% are engaged, 50% are moderately engaged and 23% are not engaged. This is simply not good enough. Do you know how important employee engagement can be for productivity levels, as well as how much success your business will have in the long run? It can really make a big difference, and just knowing that 23% of employees aren't engaged, should urge you to make a change. Because do you know what will happen next? It will be the "not engaged" employee's sole mission to derail your organization and its employees. They will spread the negativity throughout your organization attempting to lure the moderately engaged employees over to the "dark side". Now that picture while Canadian based is in actual fact on par with what we are seeing on a global perspective.

Your culture and your leadership team in any organization are crucial to minimizing the disengagement in the organization. How you develop future leaders that have been identified in your succession planning process is very important. What is sad though is that most organizations do not spend any time on developing successors. We love to set people up for failure – don't we? Your leadership development program must have a mentoring and coaching component attached to it and those mentors and coaches need to have some form of training. Would you like to be on a guided tour of the African jungle with a guide that has not been trained? Your culture needs to be a learning and development culture – a mentoring culture. You wake up and want to come to work knowing that a work colleague is going to provide guidance for you to grow either personally or professionally. You wake up and want to come to work knowing that you are going to make a difference in a work colleague's life as you provide guidance that allows them to grow either personally or professionally. You leave work with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of purpose – you have made a difference!

We do need to make sure that our future leaders are equipped with all the right tools to lead us into the future. We need to make sure that they can address the engagement factor in their organization and not bury their heads in the sand as those that walked in those shoes before them. We need to provide them with a culture – an environment where they can grow personally and professionally.

We need to embrace the "power of mentoring!" Can we afford not to?

References:

1. David Aplin Group – www.aplin.com

2. Canadian Management Center – www.cmcoutperform.com