Gallup’s State of the American Workplace survey released in February 2017 reports that 70 percent of U.S. workers are not engaged at work. Engagement flows from the work, and not activities such as company picnics. It flows from creating a business environment that allows people to do their best work, and then hiring the people who love the work that needs to get done.
To inspire top performance from employees, entities must understand that its employees need to know what is important about their jobs and why they are working to achieve results. Employees need to know how their performance will be measured, including the framework and context in which their successes or failures are considered. They need to know what tools will be provided to do the work, and how much support they will have from their organization.
An example of our past work:
Situation:
- Seven year-old accounting firm with a $4.75M budget wanted to “give back” to the community
- Company initiated a quarterly “volunteer day” and gave employees the option to take the day off to volunteer at their favorite nonprofit organization
- After two attempts, the company found that only 3 of its 24 employees were participating in the quarterly volunteer day
Approach:
- Interviews with team members revealed low morale and confusion about the vision of the company
- Interview results also highlighted that many of the operational departments (i.e, Human Resources, Accounting) did not see how they fit into the overall company. They had little to no motivation to improve their work efforts
- SHG Advisors provided recommendations on the type of activities in which the team was interested in volunteering
Outcomes:
- With help from SHG, the company redefined its culture and identified the key drivers of organizational success
- The company got rid of all of the bad behaviors that were harmful to the working environment
- The company provided transparent communication and was clear about what they wanted their outcome to look like (i.e., higher morale)
- Results from interviews conducted 18 months later indicated that, while it was not perfect, morale had substantially improved and employees understood how their roles and responsibilities aligned with the company’s goals
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