Your Employees Are Your Most Important Asset
Numbers, metrics, sales, service, results, outcomes, profit, loss, success or failure is all due to something that employees create, and affect – “affect” being the operative word here. An organization’s brand is built, or broken by the people who represent the organization.
I have been reading a lot about employee engagement lately, and I’m glad to see that people are talking about it, especially during these challenging times. The articles that I have been reading basically all agree that billions of dollars are lost each year due to employees who are disengaged with their work, and their organization.
Some articles blame a lack of leadership (I would agree), and some blame a lack of direction (I would also agree). There are those who have come up with a “metric” driven solution (there’s probably something of use there), and others point to a lack of communication within organizations that create an environment of “I don’t know what’s going on so I don’t care” employee (yep, I see that as a major issue as well).
Common sense would tell us that if employees are not engaged, bad things are going to happen. Critical resources (time and creativity) will be wasted if you have employees who just go through the motions each day while at work, creating the impression of “work.” Anyone can come into an office (for the most part) and make it look like they are working, but it takes a person who has that fire and drive in their gut to make a real difference in an organization.
Disengaged employees drive mediocrity. Just getting by each day and staying under the radar is a conscious, and unconscious goal of these types of employees. A culture of mediocrity is a natural outcome due to this type of behavior, and it spreads like a disease across an organization.
Employee engagement does not have to be complicated, or take up a lot of expensive resources. Basically, educating employees about, and getting them involved with the business is a good start.
