|
It's About People
A Weekly Coaching Column from...
|
|
|
|
| |
Welcome to our new subscribers! This week's coaching column contains 722 words and will take about 5 minutes to read. We hope you enjoy it and pass it along!
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Magic of Employee Engagement
|
 Who doesn't like to fly Southwest Airlines? Huge numbers of people are just nuts about Southwest, true blue fans. So much that Southwest Airlines is now the largest carrier of passengers in the largest market in the world. Profitable since its inception in 1972, its stock ticker symbol LUV, says it all. Not only are customers made to feel welcome and appreciated at Southwest Airlines, but so are their bags. The Southwest Difference just oozes out of every employee. Southwest Airlines built their business on a culture of engagement. Southwest engages and energizes employees who in turn naturally engage and energize customers. Southwest makes flying fun.
 We frequently hear leaders state that their employees are their most valuable resource. And that is a statement most everyone can agree on. What is not so straightforward, however, is how to access the full value that employees can bring to the organization, and its customers. How to fully engage those most valuable resources and leverage them for the good of all concerned remains a mystery to most.
An engaged employee is one who is fully involved in and enthusiastic about his or her work and will naturally act in a way that furthers the organization's interests. We like to say engaged employees are tuned into and turned on by their work. Engaged employees are naturally more productive, quality oriented, team centered, customer focused, safety conscious, and take more ownership for their performance and for business outcomes. As we effectively engage employees, we tap into a resource that is darned near infinite.....our People Power.
 The Gallup Organization has conducted over 20 years of research on employee engagement worldwide, to reveal that 33% of U.S. employees are actively engaged, 49% are disengaged and 18% are actively disengaged. Disengagement costs U.S. businesses and not for profits hundreds of billions of dollars every year in lost productivity alone.
Terri Kabachnick, author of I Quit, But Forgot to Tell You, points out that employees can actually quit, forget to tell you, and remain on your payroll for years, flying under the radar screen. Gallup research reveals that employees don't quit companies; they quit bosses. This suggests that each of our supervisors and managers would do well to master the skill of fully engaging their employees. That begs the question, are our supervisors and managers fully engaged? Disengagement rolls downhill as they say.
As customers, we can tell when we are interacting with a fully engaged individual or someone just going through the motions. I have found myself thanking some disengaged person for taking my money in a retail transaction, when they fail to thank me for my business.
 For 25 years we have been helping employers and business owners tap into their most valuable resource, their employees. We have come to agree with the authors of The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, that engagement is more about energy than time. Attendance at work is easy to measure. All that tells us is that we have succeeded in getting bodies to work on a given day. Fully engaged employees habitually bring their full attention and passion for the job along with them. They are ready to focus their energy on the job at hand, and this translates into great customer interactions and profits.
Your Coaching Challenge, Should You Choose to Accept It:
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your personal engagement level? And how would you rate the engagement level of those reporting to you? If your ratings are 10, congratulate yourself and celebrate your success. If you are concerned about the disengagement epidemic attacking you or your organization, vow to study the causes of disengagement and make improvements. Vow to call professional help like The Quality Coach!®if you need to.
We'll see you online next Monday.
If you enjoyed your complimentary
 Coaching Column, please let us know! Share your thoughts as an inspiration for others in our Quality Coach community, by posting on our Quality Coach Facebook page.
 To learn more about The Quality Coach!
® services for truly tapping into the people power in your organization, visit us at
The Quality Coach!®, celebrating 25 years of coaching great leaders, great teams and great organizations.
|
|
| The Quality Coach!® "because every business is a people business"
P.O. Box 1009
Washington, MO 63090-8009
Phone: 636-239-0582
http://www.thequalitycoach.com
© Copyright 2016 The Quality Coach, LLC all rights reserved
|
|
|
|
|
