Disconnected and Disengaged? Reconnect Employees to Exceptional Performance
By Jay Forte, Humanetrics LLC
In a world of powerful social networks and immediate communication methods, today’s workers know what it means to be connected. When connected, they share, create, challenge and perform. So if today’s worker is so good at connecting, why is today’s worker so disconnected from the workplace?
Review these “disconnected” statistics: More than half of all employees do just enough at work not to be fired. Employees change roles every 18 – 36 months. At any point in time 48% of workers are actively job hunting. In the next 5 years, 20% of the country’s largest companies will lose 40% of their top level talent to retirement. Many of these companies have no succession plan to prepare younger workers to be ready to step up and stop the outflow of significant company information (brain drain). Employees are truly disconnected from their workplace. So what is the real issue?
Today’s disconnected workplace is more about management than employees; employees want to be connected and to do a great job; they are just uninspired. Today’s employees find little connection to their roles, their management or their workplace. It happens because management continues to use outdated and ineffective methods to activate employees and drive performance. These misguided methods unintentionally disconnect our employees from the workplace.
We are now in an intellectual workplace; we have moved from manufacturing to service, from industrial to intellectual, from brawn to brain. As author Seth Godin states, “we used to make food (agrarian society), then we made things (industrial age), now we make ideas” (service economy). Our days are no longer involved doing the same repetitive process that was a significant part of manufacturing or the industrial age. Much of manufacturing moved offshore and left us with a service economy. Service is an intellectual and thinking environment.
The workplace in the industrial age focused on producing each day. Being connected to the workplace was not as important because employees just needed to show up to keep production and machinery running. Whether an employee felt connected or disconnected, the results did not vary much.
Now, look at today’s intellectual or service age. Every service event now creates an impression in the mind of a customer – some advance customer loyalty, others destroy it. The employee is now center stage and is creating the service brand on a daily basis by what she does, says, feels, invents and thinks. This employee must now be (emotionally) connected to her work, her manager, her organization and to the world to perform at levels that drive customer loyalty and organizational success. If any of these areas are disconnected, performance suffers, customers are affected and the organization feels the impact. In spite of knowing this, most organizations have workforces who remain disconnected, doing as little as possible, hoping not to get fired. So what is the process to move the disconnected employee to a “connected”? We start with management.
Managing employees in an intellectual age requires an understanding that the most important asset of the organization is the “humanity” of the employee – her brain and heart, her thinking and passion. When employees connect to a workplace, they activate their thinking and their passions. That means that the best way to connect employees is to understand the value each one brings and work to maximize it to connect the employee emotionally to the work.
In the recent book HumanSigma, authors and Gallup Organization researchers Dr. John Fleming and Jim Asplund present that satisfied and dissatisfied customers buy similar volumes; loyal customers, however, buy significantly more and actively support the business. The primary difference that inspired loyalty (and therefore increased purchases) was the presence of an emotional connection by the customer to the product, brand or organization. The same concept exists with employees. The greatest performance happens from loyal employees who have an emotional connection (relationship) with their manager, their workplace and their role.
We are in the age of “soft skills” – those dreaded human emotions and feelings that industrial age managers banished from the workplace. Today, relationships are critical to engagement and connection. Strong relationships attract and keep the best employees. Strong relationships attract and keep the best customers. The starting point for all employee connection to performance is a strong relationship the employee has with her manager.
It has been repeatedly said that “people quit people before they quit companies.” This means that employees disconnect from managers (the person) before they disconnect from companies. The reverse is also true. Employees who connect (have strong relationships) with managers perform and remain loyal. This is the key to millennial management – a strong and successful relationship with each employee to each them well enough to know what will connect each to her work, the company and to her objectives. When in place, this drives all other levels of employee connection.
The way to start reconnecting employees to performance is to understand the immense value of the manager/employee relationship. Gone are the command-and-control days of the industrial age; today, managers must inspire and engage. Today’s managers drive performance by knowing employees, dealing with them as people, maximizing their strengths and offering opportunities that match their personal and professional plans. Today’s manager must be available, open, good at communication and caring. This evokes the same back from the employee. And in a service economy, it matters how employees feel at work because the present these feelings and emotions to customers. How an employee felt when her only company was a machine was not as important as the face to face contact employees have with customers. The focal point of connection and therefore performance is the manager/employee relationship.
When the lines of communication are open (and a connection exists) between the manager and the employee, the following things can happen:
• The manager can assess the employee’s talents (natural thinking) and use the information to place the employee in a role that matches the way she thinks. The closer these are matched, the more capable and confident and employee feels. This connects the employee to the manager and to her role.
• The manager can work with each employee to set performance expectations for each role that tells an employee what is expected but lets the employee develop the methods to achieve the expectations. This connects the employee to the manager by the supportive approach and trust, and connects the employee to performance because the employee owns the process to implement and achieve the expectations.
• The manager can provide regular performance feedback to help employees develop skills, master projects and perform in a more significant way. This connects the employee to the manager for the support, coaching, education and trust. This connects the employee to performance because she is continually improving and can see the difference she makes with customers and in results.
• The manager can provide a fair career development discussion about the future roles of the employee. This connects the employee to the manager for the time, effort, personal attention and care to discuss the employee’s future and to allow the employee to have a voice in the process. This connects the employee to the workplace as she develops and works a plan that advances her in areas that make sense for her talents, her objectives and the needs of the business.
Millennial managers are successful when they care about their people – as thinking, feeling, and emotional people. They are genuinely interested in their values, interests and goals. They know them personally and professionally. They ask great questions and listen for answers that will help customize the perfect job, match them to the right tasks, inspire them to reach and grow, know the best ways to help them learn, and celebrate their achievements. This manager/employee relationship is the key to success and performance. Done well, it connects the employee to the manager – the single greatest way of inspiring employee loyalty.
So, managers, it is time to Fire Up! your employees by connecting to them to know them well. Build this connection; ask great questions and really listen. Care about your employees. Spend time with them by placing them in the right jobs; develop plans to achieve their performance expectations. Be prepared to coach, counsel and mentor to improve their performance and discuss their future with them. If you want employees to make a difference with customers, then you must make a difference with employees. If you want employees to get to know customers to know how to maximize the service event, then you must get to know your employees to maximize the employee event.
Humanity and connections now rule performance. Successful millennial managers are aware of how the world has changed and how they must now adapt. The good news is that what works at home to create powerful relationships with family, spouses, children and friends also works in the workplace. Employees need managers to watch and remember the details, to get to know what each employee is good at, to care enough to do the right thing for each one and above all, to communicate. Dictating and demanding alienates employees and inhibits performance. Today we must inspire, engage, ask and define. Help employees connect with you and to their work; they will then connect to the rest of the world with the great stories about you and your workplace. News of good things travels fast in our connected world. Your reputation as a capable millennial manager will invite other great employees, drive great performance and attain great results.
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