Engagement – Connecting Focus, Productivity and Profitability

By Pat Heydlauff

Engagement is all about focusing the power of leadership and the workforce on the productivity and profitability of your organization. This holds true for profit centered organizations and non-profit membership driven associations. An engaged focused workforce is key to a successful business roadmap for sustainable productivity and profitability.

There is a next generation for creating the engaged workforce. Call it Engagement 3.0 or Harness the Energy, the engaged workforce is fluid not static and needs a new approach with new tools in the 21^st Century. It is time to eliminate the leadership boxes that stifle and limit relationships, communications and productivity.

Harness the Flow of Energy: Energy moves throughout the workplace just as the ebb and flow of the tide. Where there is little or no resistance, it will flow smoothly and with good productivity. Where it is unwelcome and employees are not aboard with the organization's vision and goals, it will wreak havoc with meeting deadlines and production.

Just what is the flow of energy throughout your workplace? Are there things, thoughts and workers preventing you from harnessing the natural flow of productive and profitable energy? Are your leadership and workforce focused on the same productivity and profitability outcome?

Generate New Organizational Thinking

Evaluate the Flow of Your Organization's Energy: Determine whether everyone is onboard with your goals and objectives. Or, are things like communications, physical barriers and organizational bureaucracy creating obstacles.  Create a new roadmap that ensures the flow of energy in both your physical workplace environment and the workforce. Everyone needs to buy in to the same vision, same goals and same productivity and profitability objectives.

Keep it Simple: When creating your roadmap to your 21^st Century future, be clear and concise. Speak in bullet points and sound bites that everyone can understand. Prominently posting the company mission statement is not the same as communicating with the workforce. Use plain easily understandable language and create it both verbally and visually.

As you communicate, remember to use all forms of communication, visual, auditory and kinesthetic. In today's society, communication in all three forms is critical because you never know which type will reach one person yet mean nothing to the next. Use pictures sounds and feelings in all of your communications. One of the following three concepts will work for everyone.

• I see

• I hear

• I feel

Stick with it! One of the biggest mistake leadership makes is not adopting a "stick with it" attitude. When there is resistance to change; observe, re-evaluate, take action and then stick with it.

When you create a good roadmap to harness the flow of energy in your workforce, the result will be a more focused workforce that increases your productivity and profitability.

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