Ten Actions You Can Take To Mobilize Your Workforce around Your Business Strategy - Part 3

3. Engaged in What?

Our position is that it’s not enough to get employees engaged. When we work with executives who tell us they want their employees to be more engaged, we respond by asking, “Engaged in WHAT?” For example:

Scenario 1
The Situation:
An engineer is highly engaged in the current project he is working on. He puts in long hours and lots of discretionary effort and really enjoys the work. Sounds good, right?

The Problem:
The project he is working on is his pet project which has little to no strategic value to the company.

Scenario 2
The Situation:
A sales representative has good relationships with his customers and is passionate about his products. What could be better?

The Problem:
The products he is passionate about are the old products and he is hesitant to sell the new products that take the firm in a more strategic direction. The customers with whom he has relationships are long-term “friends” but he is hesitant to be proactive about establishing new relationships with customers in more strategic segments.

These examples make it clear that being engaged alone is simply not sufficient. The type of engagement depicted in these scenarios is what we call “aimless engagement.” Employees are engaged, but their focus has little to do with the strategic imperatives of the business.

Organizations instead need to manufacture what we call “aligned engagement.” Aligned engagement ensures that the workforce is engaged in the strategic priorities of the organization. An organization’s strategic priorities include its:

• New business objectives and revised work processes
  
• Strategic change initiatives
  
• Competitive strategy
  
• Customer segmentation approaches
  
• New sales strategies
  
• New products and/or pricing
  
• Increasing innovation
  
• Enterprise system implementations
  
• Reorganizations and acquisitions
  
• Providing unparalleled levels of customer service
  

When an organization focuses on aligned engagement, initiatives are fueled by the power of a mobilized workforce that is engaged in the realization of critical strategic drivers. 

For us, getting employees engaged means aligning your workforce around your critical business objectives.

Ten Actions You Can Take to Build Employee Engagement – Action #1 

 #1 –Don’t Focus on “Aimless Engagement” Efforts: Ensure that whatever training, communication, and organizational initiatives you undertake are not generic, off-the-shelf engagement solutions. Instead, focus on building an engagement plan around your own most critical strategic imperatives.