Five ways to revamp your engagement culture

Summer has arrived in London and with it a sense of cautious optimism. Even though there are whispers of the economic situation improving, employees may still have some way to go before they're fully convinced and can start feeling positive about the future.

To ensure you're tackling this issue in the best possible way, now may be a good time to review your engagement strategy.

In a new article on the Internal Comms Hub, James Brook, CEO of consultancy Titan Talent, offers five steps to creating a high engagement culture whilst avoiding large, quick-win techniques that may not be as effective as they initally seem.

"Because people typically don't get much feedback on their strengths during their life and career, they frequently don't understand their strengths as well as their weaknesses," says Brook.

"Many even experience anxiety, discomfort and embarrassment when talking about their strengths as they've learned to fear complacency, failure and being too different from the rest of the 'pack'."

Below are Brook's practical steps to implementing a high engagement culture.

1. Build awareness of strengths and talents
There are many ways to build self-awareness about strengths, including reflecting more on one's conscious experience, and feedback from colleagues and other stakeholders. However, we've found that the best is to use an objective strengths assessment tool such as Strengthscope (www.strengthscope.com). The benefit of such an assessment is that it provides a common language for people to start exploring their strengths and enables them to focus their energies on relevant opportunities to apply these more fully.

Like professional athletes, talented employees need to practice positive routines or ways of doing their work which reflect who they really are.

2. Act to make strengths and talents productive
Self-awareness is crucial, but not sufficient. As part of ongoing performance reviews, managers and their employees need to work in partnership to explore how these strengths can be made more productive, not only in the person's current role, but in tasks and projects outside the role. Like professional athletes, talented employees need to build and practice positive routines or ways of doing their work which reflect who they really are and what comes most naturally to them. When practiced regularly and applied appropriately, these action routines result in successes which in turn reinforce the person's self-confidence and determination to strive even harder; a "virtuous circle" develops which contributes to a culture of winning and success.

3. Minimize toxic routines that undermine performance
Toxic thought patterns and action routines rooted in a person's weaker areas conspire to undermine confidence and performance. It's important for employees to understand these toxic routines and to mitigate them wherever possible. For example, if a person is generally disorganized and not energized by planning and organizing, (s)he should find someone who is organized to help, thereby compensating for this weakness. Moreover, the individual can look for and implement tools, systems and techniques to ensure this weakness doesn't become so toxic that it derails his/her career.

But toxic routines don't only originate from areas of weakness. Toxic routines can also stem from misprioritizing or unintentionally ignoring the issue at hand. For example, if a manager is too persuasive, (s)he may try to influence arguments in his/her favour regardless of the importance of the issue. (S)he may tend to engage in intellectual debate for debate's sake rather than focusing on co-workers' real interests and concerns. It's important to help employees manage these strengths in overdrive by setting clear expectations and providing corrective guidance and coaching at an early stage.

4. Learn to adapt strengths and talents to new situations
To get the most from his/her strengths, the employee has to learn to use them with agility, flexing them to suit the needs of different situations.

We have found that good performance is a function of a person's strengths, the skills they have to fully leverage this strength and the agility they develop to flex their strengths and skills to the needs of the situation. Skills training will help employees develop the necessary skills and knowledge to unlock their natural strengths and talents. However, they will also need regular and constructive feedback and on-the-job "stretch" opportunities to perform outside of their natural comfort zone.

5. Measure progress and communicate successes
Putting in place robust, multi-method systems to measure the success of strengths-focused interventions and ensuring successes and learning are widely communicated in the organization, is crucial to the success of a strengths-focused people management strategy. Important questions to ask include:

• To what extent do employees believe that an increased awareness of their strengths and how to use these productively is contributing to their performance and sense of engagement?
• To what extent are strengths-focused approaches helping build more versatile, cohesive teams which promote the use of different strengths and talents to achieve business goals?
• To what extent are the new programs contributing to key performance indicators, including financial results?

Achievements, even small ones, should be captured, recorded and shared widely in the organization to build a sense of achievement, confidence and hope, which will drive further successes.

Talent is the lifeblood of most private sector organizations, particularly during the difficult market conditions we now face. However, many organizations still struggle with dated and ill-conceived approaches to engage their workforce. Like professional athletes, individuals and teams who focus on core strengths and perform tasks that are intrinsically rewarding will be more engaged and successful that those who are offered only extrinsic rewards based on the traditional "carrot" and "stick" approach. Matching employee strengths to organizational goals and priorities offers a cost-effective and energizing way to boost loyalty, resilience, flexibility and results.

Until next time,

P.S. Are you keen to incorporate Twitter, Linked In or Facebook into your communication mix but not quite sure how to go about it? Or are you already using social media and would like to share ideas and discover what’s working at other organizations? Whichever category you fall into, Melcrum’s new one-day social media workshop is the perfect opportunity for you to take the next step.

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