How to achieve transcendence in business: Believe in others

What motivates people at work?

How to boost the bottom line

In a post-recession environment where employee engagement plays a major role in organizational success — up to a 250 per cent boost to the bottom line — attention to motivation and engagement demonstrate greater loyalty from employees. A focus on innovation sets organizations apart. (See below infographic.)

What does innovation look like with respect to employees?

Feel valued. Feel engaged.

From the employees point of view:

• Believe in me
• Believe in others

Recent data from a Dale Carnegie engagement study, which focused in part on “belief in senior leadership”, found:

• 69 per cent of disengaged employees would leave their current job for just a 5 per cent pay increase

Organizations that believe people are intelligent, self-motivated individuals that do good work outperform. Collaborative work, like many things, thrives when management prioritizes it. Minimizing employees’ knowledge and efforts is counterintuitive.

Brilliant work comes from treating people like they’re brilliant. But how do you get those diamonds to shine?

Creating a culture where employees are underappreciated, creates an environment where employees:

• Give less
• Find another way to feel appreciated
• Move on

Invest in relationships

Business is about relationships. Relationships need investment just like anything else you want to grow. That’s as important internally as it is externally.

Every company is trying to get the best out of its employees. Because every company faces the costs inherent in employee turnover.

Disengaging from employees is disengaging from operating margin

Towers Watson studied 50 global companies and  found:

• Companies with low engagement scores had an average operating margin just under 10 per cent
• High traditional engagement had a higher margin of 14 per cent
• Companies with what Towers defines as the highest “sustainable engagement” scores had an average one-year operating margin of 27 per cent

The Carnegie study found companies lose $350 billion a year because of employee disengagement. One-third of a trillion dollars lost to employee disengagement.

What do companies want to achieve? Three things they don’t want is less productivity, increasing turnover or gifting employees to competitors.

Engage to innovate, innovate to engage

Employees of companies that outperform when it comes to innovation said in a Hay Group survey (see infographic below):

• A majority of executives intend to create employee incentives to encourage collaboration across functions (79 per cent)
• My company evaluates or rewards leaders based on their ability to build excellent relationships with peers (95 per cent)
• 91 per cent of best-in-class companies regularly reach out to employees for ideas on creating efficiencies

Watching a former employee later excel with a competitor is painful. Long-term strategy regarding employee engagement and innovation should embrace the strengths of employees.

Forgetting to invest in meaningful work for employees comes with its own negatives. How do we know?

Because according to 95 per cent of employees at top companies, leaders work hard to connect people with projects that are personally meaningful to their employees.

Believe in your employees. Transcend the mean and shine.

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Images: Flickr NostalgicHaze/Vermin Inc.