3 warning signs you may have an engagement problem

I’ve talked about why organizations should care about employee engagement and 3 tips to get yours back on the engagement train. Thing is, employee engagement is a tricky animal and most organizations see the early operational symptoms of an engagement issue before they see the greater problem.

Here at Rypple I’m fortunate enough to work with some pretty amazing organizations, all of whom come to us with the same end goal; to engage, motivate, and align their teams. However, the operational symptoms they come are sometimes different. To help you determine if you might have an engagement problem, here are 3 warning signs I see most often.

1. Your people say they want more feedback

I’d be a rich man if I had a nickel for every time I heard something like this:

“A recent organizational health survey revealed that our people want more feedback that we’re giving them now”.

This phenomenon is definitely not surprising. Changing workforce demographics means that organizations now have to contend with a larger number of GenY/millennial employees than ever before. These employees not only come with a greater sense of entitlement than previous generations, but they also think about feedback differently than they do. Like many of us, they crave smaller bits of actionable feedback they can put into practice quickly! Gone are the days where people are content with a once-a-year grade, rank, or score. Unfortunately many organizations struggle with providing their people with the volume and frequency of feedback they crave. As employee performance experts Zenger-Folkman point out in a recent study, if you aren’t in a position to help them get ongoing and continuous insights and coaching on their performance, they’ll find someone who can!

Solution: help them source as much feedback as they want as often as possible. You’ll never be able to provide it on your own.

2. Your people hate performance reviews

Hating performance reviews is certainly nothing new. In fact, in a previous post I summarized 3 key personal reasons why they simply to jive in the culture of many of today’s organization. However, the larger issue is that people simply don’t see them as an effective way to motivate and engage their teams (in fact, some believe doing them has the exact opposite effect).

Rebecca Doerr, HR Manager at Miovision, explained it the best when she said,

“We have a great culture and relationships within our people here. Our managers and our coworkers are our friends. Why would we sit down and have a once-a-year conversation where we act totally differently?!?”

If the goal of employee engagement is to bring your employees closer to the corporate bosom, to motivate, and align them with the corporate culture, then instituting a process that distances them from you is pretty much the worst thing you can do.

Solution: ditch the reviews and try promoting the social behaviors that drive performance (the topic of my next post!).

3. Your team isn’t hitting their goals

People can be challenged to achieve goals for a number of reasons; some operational, some motivational. Regardless, assuming their goals were somewhat reasonable to begin with, not hitting them can often be chalked up to lack of engagement and focus. Most of us actually want to excel in our jobs, but we sometimes struggle to focus on the specific actions and activities that will lead us to success.  The result: goals are missed, morale is deflated, and spiral of disengagement continues.

Solution: help your team stay focused and engaged by setting aside a few minutes each week to chat with them 1:1. Not only will they feel more connected to you and the business, but you’ll ensure the things they’re working on will help them hit their goals.