We have all been there: signing up for the gym membership, feeling motivated to get in shape and create healthy goals. It’s easy though, you sign up and now that you have this great membership you expect the pounds to start dropping, and your clothes to start fitting better. But did you sign up to put the effort in? This is similar to employee engagement. You can sign up for workshops and seminars, listen to thought leaders, and read all the top books and studies on employee engagement, but you likely won’t see results unless you continue to exercise the concept and put your goals into action.
Staying motivated is a key element to both achieving your goals with a gym membership and employee engagement. If you use your gym membership for a week and give up after no results, it’s because you didn’t put in the full amount of effort required. Same goes for employee engagement; it does not happen overnight. Implementing training and cultural changes for employee engagement takes time, and that means your leaders need to be patient and proactive.
Setting realistic expectations and goals is another essential aspect to achieving employee engagement success. To keep the metaphor going, if you expect to meet your weight loss goal of 30 pounds in one month, and only lose 8, you will feel discouraged and unmotivated to continue because “it’s not working.” You probably didn’t set a realistic goal for yourself. Similarly, if you expect employee engagement scores to increase after one training or right after implementing a new initiative you are likely going to be disappointed by the results. It’s imperative to understand that these initiatives take time to integrate into your organization, and it’s essential that your leadership team understands and supports this.
So what happens when you reach a goal? You absolutely cannot stop. Imagine after about a year of your gym membership you reach your weight loss goal, and you decide since you’ve made it to your goal you are going to stop. It’s highly unlikely that you will stay at your weight loss goal; you must keep working to stay on track with your health goals. Employee engagement is the same exact way; you cannot put your feet up and stop working towards employee engagement just because performance is higher, and retention is better. Employee engagement is always evolving and must constantly be exercised. Once employee engagement is embedded in your leadership and culture, it will be much easier to practice, just as exercising regularly will become part of your lifestyle. Setting realistic goals and knowing that they won’t happen instantly will help to drive your employee engagement success.
– Kaitlyn Carr, Organizational Development Specialist, @kacarr789 @emplyengagement
