Before I jump in, why don't we just flip this on its head and have a look at what employee disengagement looks like.
If you're at work right now, take a sneaky peak at all the people around you. I'm sure you'll be able to spot at least one person who ticks a few of these boxes:
Slouching, low mood, staring blankly into space, always making tea/coffee, first to complain, often late, needs constant reminding to do their job, and every time you get near them it feels as though they've just stolen all your energy from you...
Engaged employees are the direct opposite. Now, I wonder if you can spot anyone who's:
Excited every morning, loves helping others, forever going above and beyond the call of duty, always on time, never complains or moans, hyper productive, and lifts everyone in the office by just being there.
So, how do you go from getting your employees disengaged to engaged?
First, you need to assess just how bad the situation is with everyone else:
Is it just one employee, are there more than one, or is it's so bad that it's the whole office, department or organisation?
Second, you need to assess your own situation:
Do you want your own job?
If you don't, then it will be near impossible for you to get anyone excited about theirs.
Third, you need to make small changes based on your assessment:
If you're great, that's awesome! Time to get stuck into building your relationship with your team, find out what they think would help the office, if there's been a sudden shift, or whether the job has been slowly sucking the life out of them for years.
If you are not so happy about your own job, I'm sorry. Now, if this is you in all seriousness you have got two choices - 1) cut and run, or 2) sort yourself out, then get the team excited.
Find out what is stressing you out and take small steps each day to change your own life.
Now, the best thing about you doing this is it will have a positive impact on the organisation and start to turn around employee engagement before you've even started to focus on them!
Fourth, steal from experts:
Jump on Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter... head straight over to your 'go-to' source of information and digest as much as you need.
There are quick fixes, tips, long lasting change programs, books, ebooks, courses, eCourses workshops...
There are so many people peddling information on this subject right now it can be exhausting even just flicking through page one of the search results!
But, remember this one golden rule - check out the person who is telling you the information first.
Have they got real live proof they can do what they say?
And, no I don't mean from their mum, dad, best friend... who've posted something nice on twitter.
What do they do for a living?
Are they a 'growth expert' but never worked in an organisation in their life?
Or have they knuckled down and proven time and time again what they're doing works?
I know who I'd rather trust - but hey, maybe I'm just picky!
Finally, you need to get help from the inside.
It's not something you can do alone.
You are not the organisation.
Enhancing employee engagement has got to be a top-down process.
Your employees need to see that everyone on the senior team (and all the in between supervisors, managers, team leaders...) are all on the same page.
Everyone needs to muck in and lead from the front.
This is 100% non-negotiable.
This is probably why all the other things that you've tried before just haven't stuck.
You've been going it alone.
So, I hope this helps?
Happy engaging & catch up soon - Katie.
Before I forget, if you can't be bothered to search anywhere else I've got an 'employee engagement checklist' you can have for free.
Oh, one more thing, there's also psychological tips in there to get you started - but hey it's your choice.