I recently read an interesting article called Employee Engagement: Reality v Buzzword. While the author goes on to outline their own perceptions on employee engagement, the lead-in states:

“The buzzword ‘employee engagement’ is the new mantra (and) seen as a broad cure for corporate maladies and poor productivity that fails to meet company objectives and targets.”

employeecrossing.com

For certain, employee engagement remains an often misunderstood concept and many managers find employee engagement nearly impossible to “operationalize” where the rubber meets the road. However, engagement is a real concept. It is measurable. And has roots in scientific fact and study.

So, why is it so hard for leaders to get traction on the this front? The author of Employee Engagement: Reality v Buzzword puts it this way:

…managers get lost in theories and debates on definitions of ‘employee engagement’ and the 20+ drivers of employee engagement marked by researchers like BlessingWhite, Gallup, Towers Perrin and others, …which are too difficult for ordinary mortals to grasp or put into practice.

employeecrossing.com

I agree on the first part of the above quote, however I totally disagree with the last part. Having done considerable research on this topic myself, I believe I have been able to break the code of employee engagement, so to speak. I disagree not because my intellect is above that of “ordinary mortals”. Only because I spent the time to thoroughly read the available material and cross reference it with other pertinent, tested and proven philosophies. It’s really not that hard to understand the many correlations. But it also helped that I was in executive leadership positions at that time of my career and was able to implement and hone these principles into workable operating systems to recruit, onboard, train and manage individuals to become highly engaged employees. In addition, these positions allowed me the authority to change our “people systems” to build into our everyday corporate routines the tools and practices required to self-perpetuate these engagement-enhancing techniques.

The whole concept of employee engagement isn’t new – first appearing in business literature about 20 years ago. I first learned of employee engagement myself around 2005. And since then, I have implemented what I have learned on this topic in at least 50 hotels across two different companies.

The results were significant. In just 6 years at one company, we were able to increase revenues by 40% and NOI by 63%. Believe me, employee engagement is real. Employee engagement works and it can work for you too.

I plan on writing a more in depth article on my philosophies regarding employee engagement in the very near future as a continuation of our series on “what I know now that I wish I knew then”.

Stay tuned…