By Magi Graziano, CEO
Conscious Hiring^® and Development

With today’s global ability to produce carbon copy technology and business models, people truly are a company’s only competitive advantage. Businesses that want to accentuate and optimize their competitive talent advantage focus on employee engagement strategies that improve overall workforce productivity and return on staffing investments.

A major disruption to employee engagement is the adverse impact of the unhappiness epidemic across many companies. When employees are disengaged or disenfranchised with their work situations, performance plateaus or greatly diminishes. When there is awareness about what causes unhappiness at work, a company can do something about it.

Studies have shown that the drivers of employee engagement have everything to do with how an employee feels about work and feels at work. It begins with the employee feeling connected and invested in the company mission and direction and continues with the employee having trust in the company’s leadership.

The first step in creating and inspiring engagement in the workforce is to debunk the pervasive and misleading myths about employee engagement.

A flexible work environment fosters productivity.

While remote work opportunities reduce the carbon footprint and avert hours wasted in traffic, more often than not companies do a poor job of looping remote workers into the day-to-day activities of the business. Unfortunately, a very typically adverse impact of remote work for the employee is out of sight, out of mind. Research shows that remote workers and workers with flex time schedules receive less coaching and mentoring and miss out on the institutional knowledge-sharing and socialization that happens in the typical course of a shared workspace.

Strong paychecks equal strong loyalty.

Not all people are primarily motivated by money and, more often than not, fair and sustainable pay is not a motivator – it is a table stake. For years, company leaders have approached solving the employee retention problem through monetary rewards and incentives. While this economic motivator works for 20 percent of the population, most organizations are finding that employee spiffs and salary increases alone are insufficient in reversing the turnover trend.

For 80 percent of the working population, the money is not a lever that leads to engagement and buy in. Forty percent of people want workplace rewards in terms of more educational opportunities, rewarding and challenging projects and a sense that they can further their knowledge and career path as a result of working with a specific company or in a certain role. The other 40 percent of workers want to feel emotionally connected to the mission and service of the organization and to the customers they serve. Increasing their customer-facing opportunities is much more rewarding than a few extra bucks in their paycheck or a receiving a gift card for coffee.

If money is the only mechanism to get people to stay, it leads to people using money to create to bidding wars between current and future employers.

Employee independence is necessary for performance.

One pervasive myth is that all employees need autonomy and independence, and the more hands-off that management is the better the employee will perform. The reality is that autonomy and independence are not traits that everyone values. To some employees, being left alone can be a true benefit, and they may thrive when left up to their own devices. To others, it is a recipe for feeling disconnected, isolated and ignored.

A job is just a job.

Today’s workers, and human beings in general, are much more evolved and present in work life fulfillment than ever before. Employees today fundamentally want and need so much more than a job for a paycheck. A striking majority of workers have said they want purpose and meaning in the work they do and that they feel happier at work when they know that what they do matters to the success of the organization.

Employees should be satisfied with their current position.

High-performing people need to see a pathway for themselves in the role they own and in the company in which they work. When employees feel that a company is invested in their growth, they are more committed to their roles and more connected to how they impact the success of the company.

Your company is enough to keep the employee.

The sixth myth is that once people go to work for a company, their loyalty to the company and brand is enough to keep them engaged and retained. What has become painfully apparent over the last decade is that people don’t leave companies – they leave managers.

When good employees do not have strong relationships with their managers, no incentive or brand loyalty will keep the employees fully engaged. People need to feel appreciated, respected, acknowledged and important; when their direct managers do not provide meaningful assignments, regular feedback and mentoring, engagement is thwarted.

While all of these perceived solutions are good ideas as components of an effective employee engagement program, alone they are insufficient means to drive employee connection and engagement. When carrots like money, time off, autonomy and career path are not coupled with alignment, good people management and “match fit,” those incentives wind up costing companies millions and derive little to no benefit in the long run.

A well developed, conscious employee engagement program considers who people are as individuals and allows for customization in the approach to assigning work and giving feedback. Individualization is a 21st century shift from the one-size-fits-all management of the 1980s. A main component of a well-built employee engagement program includes a highly competent management team that embraces the coaching and mentoring of their people.

When a manager takes the time to offer professional development opportunities, communicate how employees’ roles contribute to the overall organization’s success and provide rewards for great performance, employees feel appreciated and engagement soars.

Magi Graziano is the CEO of Conscious Hiring^® and Development, a speaker, employee recruitment and engagement expert and author of The Wealth of Talent. Graziano provides her customers with actionable, practical ideas to maximize their effectiveness and ability to create high-performing teams. With more than 20 years’ experience as a top producer in the recruitment and search industry, she empowers and enables leaders to bring transformational thinking to the day-to-day operation. For more information, visit www.KeenAlignment.com.