Our last blog post was all about understanding the role of employee engagement in strategy execution. Taking that a step further, this post will explore what is required to engage your employees in a manner that enables successful strategy execution.

A recent i4CP research has shown that employee engagement can be the key to achieving high performance in organizations. The research also identified that employee engagement was the critical differentiating factor between high and low-performance organizations.

So, how do you do it?

Below are five significant steps that should be used to engage employees better, and improve your strategy execution -

Clarity of Goals

One of the reasons why employees cannot engage with a particular business strategy is because they do not understand it well enough. While the management and certain stakeholders would know why a particular strategy is being implemented, this might not trickle down to the team that’s executing it. In the absence of that, the work they do will not be as great as it could have been.

So clear, concise goals are key to having your employees engaged and invested in the successful execution of a strategy.

Assign Apt Roles

Once the goals are clear, ensure that every member of the team knows their role within the strategy. While the big picture is important, everyday execution demands smaller, tangible deliverables that gives employees a simplified view of what they need to accomplish. This gives an immediate sense of engagement and understanding of where their skills fit into the larger scheme of things.

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Empower Your Employees

Having a goal to achieve but no means to get it done, be it in terms of the freedom to try new ideas or the resources to execute their ideas, can quickly lead to disenchantment with the goal. So you have to make sure that your employees have everything they need to achieve the tasks they have been assigned.

Empowering your employees would involve:

• creating a work environment where new ideas are welcome
• trusting them to come up with ideas that are worth exploring and giving them the freedom to try them out
• giving them all the necessary resources to bring their ideas to life
• conduct workshops and trainings to upskill your employees

Applaud and Recognize Good Performances

Positive reinforcement is critical to keep your employees engaged with your goals and strategies. Use competition to drive employee engagement and reward great ideas and performance.

When it comes to praise and recognitions, it’s also important to consider how you quantify employee contribution. Holly Green, CEO, The Human Factor Inc. points out that employees cannot relate to examples where their work has led to revenue or monetary gains for the organization. So it’s best when praise is offered in terms of how employees’ work impacted more relatable metrics like conversion, delivery or response times, or customer service.

Evaluate managers based on their employee engagement level

Last but not the least, rate and award managers based on their ability to assign tasks and carry others along. Make it clear that in your company, the more the participation, the better the glory. Do not sponsor ‘one-man projects’ and always push for the equal involvement of everyone in one way or another.

Employee engagement is easier when your team members feel a sense of belonging to the organization. So managers who can foster that feeling within their teams should be rewarded.

Do you find these tips useful to engage your employees for effective strategy execution?
Let us know what methods you use to engage employees in the comment section below.

While employee engagement on each project is great, you also need employee engagement across the organization. Journyz can be a great platform to get started with purpose-drive employee engagement campaigns.