Our biggest opportunities exist outside our
own comfort zone. It’s up to us to find
the courage and self-belief to break out, grab them and grow.
As owners and managers of agencies we have
a responsibility to enable our employees to do the same.
We need to make sure they feel supported,
engaged and inspired enough to want to break out of their own comfort bubbles,
reach out and grab those opportunities and in so doing, grow as people and
professionals, and through that growth add value to the business.
The same of course, applies to us! We can
only be better leaders and managers if we too are prepared to embrace change.
Easier said than done?
Engagement within the context of stakeholder
alignment is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing agency owners. We all
recognise that fully engaged staff who feel valued, empowered and supported are
key to creating and maintaining an authentically sustainable business.
It’s not as simple as looking for the
‘right’ people with the ‘right’ skills. The right skillset is clearly essential
but the real challenge is to bring together and unify that blend of passions,
values and personalities that, with the right support, can enable individuals
to be outstanding in everything they do.
Research shows that money is further down
the list of criteria than we might think in people’s career aspirations.
Important, yes but what ranks higher is feeling engaged and valued, and having
the opportunity to make a difference, alongside enjoyment, challenge and social
interaction.
At a recent Dale Carnegie event, it was
revealed that a surprisingly low one in three of employed people in the UK
today feel they are actively engaged in the workplace. The remaining two thirds
feel either passively engaged, or not engaged at all. That’s quite a statistic.
It’s a fact too that 69% of workers
interviewed would be prepared to move jobs for a pay rise of just 5%. If people
are prepared to move for so little, relatively speaking, then clearly a lot of
employers have a problem, one that goes well beyond the challenges of staff
retention and continuity.
There are still too many agency employers
paying lip service to engagement, as they do to values.
As agency managers and employers we need to
make genuine, sustainable efforts to make our teams feel valued. The start of
that process has to involve empathy and an in-depth appreciation of what our
employees want and need, and what they have a right to expect from us. And it
has to be genuine.
Rewards, training, clarity, empowerment and
knowledge are all part of the rainbow of engagement but it starts with us, the
owners and managers. Our teams have to believe in us as leaders. They have to
see that we have passion, a sense of direction, ability and values. They also
need to view us as effective role models and recognise our behaviours as
reflecting genuine organisational integrity.
And that doesn’t just matter at director
and owner level. The relationship employees have with their immediate line
manager is even more critical. It’s not just what we do that’s important to the
team, it's how we do it and the authenticity we exhibit.
The theory is sound and fairly simple.
Making it happen and keeping it happening are anything but. We’ll have phases
of everything aligning and working well and then, often imperceptibly we lose
it. It happens.
The important thing is to know and believe
that it’s the right way of doing business, to keep the aspiration alive
prioritise and invest in communication with our employees. Let’s keep working
at making it happen.
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