Improve Employee Engagement

How do you turn stressed, disengaged employees into an engaged and productive team?

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Build the success of your business by building the engagement of your team

When your team are engaged your business wins

How does building the engagement of your team secure the future of your business?

Understand the importance of employee engagement and how to get it right

Should you be taking the engagement of your employees more seriously?

What difference to your business can an engaged team make?

What happens in your business when you take employee engagement seriously?

Your business wins when you engage your employees in the work that they do

Improve the productivity of your team when you actively engage your employees

Tap into the loyalty of your customers when you build the engagement of your team

How do you recruit and retain your best people?

Recruit and retain your best people by actively engaging your employees

Benefit from the outcomes by focussing on the engagement of your employees

4 outcomes for building the success of your business by engaging your team

Improve the engagement of your employees on 4 fronts…

Take the engagement of your team seriously, like Marks & Spencer did…

What can Marks & Spencer teach you about the engagement of your team?

When you listen to your employees your business wins

What happens when you ask your employees what they think?

How can your customers be happy if your team isn’t?

When you love your team, you will have happy customers

Reap the business benefits of an engaged team by taking the time to listen to what they think

How do you build the engagement of your team so your business wins?

What your team think matters when it comes to the future of your business…

Your business wins when you engage your team by asking the right questions

Time to ask the right questions in your business and retain the best members of your team

Time to ask the right questions in your business and drive-up productivity and profits

Ask the right questions in your business and have a happy team and happy customers

12 questions are the needles in a haystack your business has been looking for

Gallup asks the right questions for you to positively impact the engagement of your team

Make the right decisions using the Gallup Q12 survey in your business

12 needles in a haystack that will help your business improve the engagement of your team

Use the right questions to discover what your team thinks, your business success depends on it

Better business performance comes from asking the right questions

What happens to your employee engagement levels when you take the time to ask your team what they think?

When you ask the right questions, you build the engagement of your team

Discover the elements that contribute to a highly engaged team

Use the right questions to discover the elements of a highly engaged team

Build the engagement of your team by tackling it in 4 stages

Your business wins when you ask the right question one stage at a time

What happens when you stage-manage your employee engagement survey?

Demonstrate to your team that you mean business when it comes to engaging them in their work

Time to take employee engagement seriously in your business by breaking it down into stages

Manage your employee engagement at your own pace and show your team you are taking it seriously

Start at base camp and show your team you are taking employee engagement seriously

Climb your mountain to business success using the Gallup Q12 survey

Take employee engagement seriously by focusing on the right things

4 helping hands to improve your productivity, profitability, customer focus and employee retention

Ask the right questions in your business and keep your best people

Climb the mountain of success when you take the engagement of your team seriously

Can you afford to ignore employee engagement as a factor of your business success?

How can an engaged team help build the success of your business?

Should the engagement of your team be linked to the success of your business?

LinkedIn Updates

1. Employee engagement is a hot topic in the business world and, since the pandemic, has grown in prominence and importance. With global and UK employee engagement scores at an all-time low it’s something that you as a business leader or manager should be taking seriously. Click here to discover more.

2. Why would you not take the time to ensure that your employees are engaged in the work they do for your business? But it’s more than that… The simple truth is that disengaged employees are bad for business. Click here to discover more.

3. Employee engagement is a critical factor that can determine the success and sustainability of your business. Click here to discover how to improve your business on 4 fronts…

4. When your team are fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work, they take positive action to further your business's reputation and interests. Click here to discover that whether you employ 1, 10 or 100 people, you want your business to improve on 4 fronts.

5. What your team think matters, and what your team think can determine the future of this business. Click here to discover what Marks & Spencer did to ensure the long-term engagement of their team and how you can do the same.

6. Reap the business benefits of an engaged team by taking the time to listen to what they think, like Marks & Spencer did. Click here to discover more.

7. Imagine knowing that, wherever your team are, they are giving their wholehearted, committed, enthusiastic participation to what your business is doing, to the work they are doing and how they are doing it and to the customers they are serving… Can you say that about your team? Click here to discover more about the importance of an engaged team to the future of your business.

8. Over 25 years Gallup asked hundreds of questions to over a million employees and gathered a haystack of data on the elements critical to employee engagement. Within that haystack they discovered 12 needles to help you discover how to build and maintain the engagement of your team. Click here to discover more.

9. The Gallup Q12 survey is an essential tool for measuring employee engagement and for understanding what is going on within your business. Gallup cross-referenced 100 million answers with the performance results of 2,500 business units across 24 companies in 12 industries. They have outlined the elements that contribute to a highly engaged team in the form of 12 questions. Click here to discover what those questions are.

10. Click here to discover the questions that form the Gallup Q12 survey and how these questions can help you find out what is going on in your business and take quick decisions and actions to build the engagement of your team.

11. If it is your first time asking your team to fill out an employee engagement survey such as the Gallup Q12, it can be a nerve-wracking and uncertain experience. Dealing with all 12 questions at the same time can be a lot and make initial decisions and progress slow. Click here to discover how to gain some quick wins by breaking the Q12 into manageable stages.

12. When it comes to engaging your team, asking the questions in the Gallup Q12 survey will provide you with insights about how your team feel and what is going on in your business, but 12 questions are a lot…

Break the Gallup Q12 survey down into manageable sections and think of it like climbing a mountain, starting with basecamp. Click here to discover more.

13. It's easy to work out what happens to your customer care, productivity and team retention when you have a disengaged team, and the knock-on negative impact on profitability is obvious. Click here to discover how to use the Gallup Q12 survey to change all of this.

14. The more your team are engaged, the more positively they will impact the profits of your business and reduce your stress and anxiety about its future success. So, are you doing enough to build the engagement of your team? Click here to discover more.

Facebook Posts

3. Employee engagement is a critical factor that can determine the success and sustainability of your business. Click here to discover how to improve your business on 4 fronts…

6. Reap the business benefits of an engaged team by taking the time to listen to what they think, like Marks & Spencer did. Click here to discover more.

Break the Gallup Q12 survey down into manageable sections and think of it like climbing a mountain, starting with basecamp. Click here to discover more.

Blog Posts

Blog 1 – Does it matter whether your team are engaged or not?

Employee engagement is a hot topic in the business world and, since the pandemic, has grown in prominence and importance.

If the global employee engagement score is 23% – and this is low – and the UK employee engagement score is even lower at 10%, then it’s something that you as a business leader or manager should be taking seriously.

Why would you not take the time to ensure that your employees are engaged in the work they do for your business? But it’s more than that…

Your team might turn up every day and do a relatively good job for you, and that might be okay, but is it enough? Will it lead to greater profits and success for your business?

The simple truth is that disengaged employees are bad for business.

They often ‘turn up’ but don’t ‘show up’ – they perform their daily tasks, but never give you any more; they are frequently absent or leave early; they miss deadlines; they become sceptical or cynical; they lack customer focus, often seeing the customers as irritating; they are resistant to change; they lack motivation; and they do not wholeheartedly commit to any of the tasks they undertake. They are, for the most part, going through the motions, and many may have already ‘quietly quit’.

If any of the above rings true for members of your team, it's time to do something about it. High staff turnover, poor customer focus and low productivity all lead to one thing – low profits.

If you want your business to have a sustainable and bright future, building and maintaining the engagement of your employees is crucial.

Click the link below to read more about how to build employee engagement and how you can improve your business on 4 fronts.

Blog 2 – Build the profits of your business when you engage and motivate your employees

Employee engagement is more than just a buzzword in today’s business world. It is a critical factor that can determine the success and sustainability of your business.

When your team are fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work, they take positive action to further your business's reputation and interests.

Whether you employ 1, 10 or 100 people, you want your business to improve on 4 fronts.

You want your business to be more productive. When your team are engaged in their work, they are often more motivated and committed, which translates to higher productivity levels – they are willing to go the extra mile to achieve the goals of your business. Unengaged employees rarely use their initiative, and they waste time and avoid extra work.

You want your business to be more profitable. Engaged employees are more than just mere cogs in the machinery of your business, they are active investors, committed to the customers, the goal, the vision and the purpose of your business. They produce high-quality work, provide excellent service and are always looking for ways to drive your business forward. Greater profits are a natural result of all of these things.

You want your business to be more customer-focused. Engaged employees have a much more positive attitude towards the work they are doing when they feel well treated by you. This positive attitude will cascade into the way they treat your customers. If your team are happy, it follows that your customers will be too, fostering loyalty, repeat business and recommendations.

You want your business to retain its best people. When your employees feel valued and heard, their job satisfaction tends to rise. This reduces turnover rates, saving your business significant costs associated with recruiting and training new people. Long-term employees also bring stability and a wealth of knowledge to your business.

Employee engagement is a powerful tool that, when implemented effectively, can drive significant positive outcomes for your business. By fostering a balanced, genuine and adaptive engagement strategy, you can create a thriving workplace where employees are motivated, productive and committed to your business's success.

Click here to discover how to improve the productivity, profitability, customer care and team retention in your business when you build the engagement of your team.

Blog 3 – This is not just employee engagement, this is Marks & Spencer employee engagement

Your team determines the success of your business – what your team thinks matters.

Marks & Spencer took this seriously when dealing with levels of employee engagement.

They wanted to ensure that, although they have 85,000 staff across nearly 1,000 stores, the engagement of their teams was consistent.

With such a large workforce, they had plenty of data to work through.

The data showed that stores in the top quartile for employee engagement were twice as likely to achieve the highest customer service rating, and 25% less staff absence, than the stores in the bottom quartile.

The M&S data answers the question: How can we get our customers to love us if our employees don’t even like us?

If your employees do like you, chances are they will be more engaged in their work, and it stands to reason that, as a natural result, customers will love you too.

M&S embarked on a programme of change to ensure that no matter which store you visited, the level of engagement of its employees was high and the customer-focused approach demonstrated in the top 25% of stores ran through the other 75%.

They now do 3 employee feedback surveys a year to gather insights on how employees feel about their roles, their work environment, leadership and overall job satisfaction. These surveys typically include a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions, allowing employees to provide detailed feedback.

In addition to the 3 yearly surveys, they now regularly conduct what they call ‘pulse surveys’ that indicate the current heartbeat of the business. These are shorter and more frequent, helping to monitor employee engagement in real time so that any issues can be quickly dealt with.

They have also introduced training for the managers and leaders in the stores that were not performing and internal and external benchmarking to drive up standards.

They have adopted a data-driven approach to measuring and improving employee engagement, based on asking the right questions.

But what are the right questions? How do you begin to start to understand the levels of engagement in your team?

Click here to discover more about the right questions to ask and 12 levers that can help you make a positive impact on the engagement of your team, just as Marks & Spencer did.

Blog 4 – Build the engagement of your team by asking the right questions…

Whether you have a large or small team, are based on one site or are scattered over several locations, the engagement of your team, no matter where they are, is still critically important to the success of your business.

Imagine knowing that, wherever your team are, they are giving their wholehearted, committed, enthusiastic participation to what your business is doing, to the work they are doing and how they are doing it and to the customers they are serving…

Can you say that about your team right now?

Over 25 years, the research company Gallup asked over 1 million employees hundreds of different questions. They built a ‘haystack’ of data, which they combed through looking for the ‘needles’ that signpost the best way to build the engagement of your team and improve productivity, profitability, customer care and team retention.

Gallup discovered that table stakes – in this case, fair pay and benefits, good senior leadership and an effective organisational structure – aren’t enough when it comes to ensuring you have an engaged team.

The Gallup research determined that if these table stakes are absent, there is no chance of engaging your team. They are critically important and must be there as the foundation.

If you want to use the Gallup Q12 to provide you with insights, skills and strategies to ensure you attract, properly manage and retain the best talent in your business, the table stakes must already be in place, so the next question is:

How do you build the engagement of your people so that your business wins?

Through their extensive research, Gallup discovered 12 needles in that haystack of data. The results show that more positive answers to just 12 questions correlated with better business performance across the many different businesses they surveyed.

In other words, what your employees think and feel is directly linked to your business performance.

Rather than asking your team directly if they are engaged in their work, Gallup has worked out the elements that contribute to a highly engaged team in the form of 12 questions.

Click here to discover more about the importance of the work Gallup did and the 12 questions to ask your team, the results of which will enable your leaders and managers to make informed decisions that will directly affect engagement.

Blog 5 – The 12 levers that can help your business make the right decisions

The Gallup Q12 survey is an essential tool for measuring employee engagement and for understanding what is going on within your business.

Gallup cross-referenced 100 million answers with the performance results of 2,500 business units across 24 companies in 12 industries.

They have outlined the elements that contribute to a highly engaged team in the form of 12 questions.

These questions assess aspects of employee experience, relationships with managers, opportunities for growth and development, alignment with the business’s core purpose and values and how they feel they are perceived and recognised in the business.

The survey is conducted anonymously, but the results will identify the areas of strength and areas for improvement in your business when it comes to the engagement of your team. This will then help you and the leaders and managers within your business understand the drivers of engagement within the team and enable you to develop strategies and action plans to improve productivity, profitability, customer focus and team retention.

Here are the 12 questions included in the Gallup Q12 survey:

Do you know what is expected of you at work?
Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
At work, do your opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
Do you have a best friend at work?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

How do you think your team would score these 12 questions from 1 to 5, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree?

How many questions do you think would score a 5 (strongly agree)?

Click the link to discover more about the importance of the Gallup Q12 survey questions and delve into the tools and resources that accompany this report to discover why employee engagement matters.

Blog 6 – Manage your employee engagement one camp at a time

If it is your first time asking your team to fill out an employee engagement survey such as the Gallup Q12, it can be a nerve-wracking and uncertain experience.

But it's important to focus on the positive. You are taking the first step by asking them to complete the survey, demonstrating that you and your leaders and managers take employee engagement seriously.

Whether you score high or low, you can do something to improve your score tomorrow by working out how to improve one of the Q12 elements.

This process will also help develop the skills of the managers, as they have the greatest influence over team opinion and business performance.

But 12 levers do seem like a lot to start with, so it would be beneficial to stage-manage employee engagement and break it down into 4 steps.

Gallup suggests you compare it to climbing a mountain – starting with Base Camp. This approach means you can focus on a few Q12 levers at a time, or the ones where you are scoring the lowest.

Base Camp – “What do I get?”

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?

2. Do you have the right materials and equipment to do your work right?

Camp 1 – “What do I give?”

3. Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

4. Have you received recognition in the last 7 days?

5. Does a manager or someone at work care about you as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?

Camp 2 – “Do I belong here?”

7. At work do your opinions seem to count?

8. Does the purpose of your business make your job feel important?

9. Are your fellow employees committed to doing quality work?

10. Do you have a best friend at work?

Camp 3 – “How can we all grow?”

11. In the last 6 months has someone talked about your progress?

12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

As Devra Corey and Glenn Elliott say in their brilliant book, The Rebel Playbook:

“Don’t confuse employee engagement with employee happiness, they are fundamentally different. Engagement is something deeper, more meaningful for the employee and more valuable to the organization.”

Breaking the Gallup Q12 questions into 4 stages allows you and your team to focus on what will give you the biggest wins in the shortest time. When your team start to see that you are making decisions and taking actions based on the results of the survey, they will begin to feel positive about the future success of the business.

Click here to discover more about the importance of breaking the Gallup Q12 survey into manageable stages and the benefits to you and your team of using the survey to improve your employee engagement and your business results.

Blog 7 – 4 helping hands to help you focus on the engagement of your team

It's easy to work out what happens to your customer care, productivity and team retention when you have a disengaged team, and the knock-on negative impact on profitability is obvious.

The more your team are engaged, the more positively they will impact the profits of your business and reduce your stress and anxiety about its future success. So, are you doing enough to build the engagement of your team?

This is a journey – for you and for your team – especially if you have never used an employee engagement survey before or if the team have never been asked to complete one.

Here are 4 helping hands to get you started:

1. Before you set off – install the table stakes essentials for a highly engaged team – fair pay, benefits and organisation structure. Their absence will severely diminish your chances of engaging your team.

2. Base Camp – Work on the two questions of engagement that put the basics in place for team engagement – clarity around what is expected of them at work and ensuring that they have the right materials and equipment to do that work well.

3. Camp 1 – Now work on creating an environment that means your people can give their best. Help each team member do what they are best at, recognise and praise this good work, and demonstrate that you genuinely care, by encouraging and supporting their regular development.

4. Camps 2 and 3 – Build strong connections with your team so they feel confident to share their opinions and feel connected to the core purpose and values of the business.

These are 4 simple steps that get you on the path to finding out what makes your team and your business tick. Your business would not exist if you did not have your team, so nurture them, value them and listen to them – they may surprise you.

Click here to discover more about what difference an engaged team can make to your business.

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