Employee Engagement Is the Key to Innovation – Friday Distraction
(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at Kronos, a leading provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions. Enjoy the post!)
We’ve all seen the reports that engaged employees are more productive. But let’s pause a second to think about what greater productivity means for the business. At the individual level, it means that an employee is producing their work outputs effectively. On an organizational level, when we have lots of engaged employees, it means that the workplace is operating effectively.
Being effective and producing good work translates into more sales and greater profits. It also can include innovation. Today’s Time Well Spent from our friends at Kronos reminds me that engagement will bring innovation, but a disengaged workforce won’t innovate.
I can’t think of a single time when an ineffective, unproductive group delivered a breakthrough. Can you? Seems to me that the group would be so focused on fixing what’s broken (if they can focus at all), that they wouldn’t have the luxury of just brainstorming or thinking about the future. Even if they wanted to.
Engaged employees need to connect with the organization. It starts before the employee is hired. Recruiting practices need to let candidates know they are valued. Employee well-being and balance should come across during the interview process. New hires should be excited to be a part of the team. And the company should be excited to have them.
Engaged workplaces are built on mutual respect and trust. The manager – employee relationship is essential to creating engagement. This doesn’t mean everything will always be positive. However, negative information is much easier to process when it comes from a place of trust and respect. This applies to both management and employees.
Organizations looking for their next breakthrough innovation would be smart to look at their levels of employee engagement. Because without it, the opportunities to conceptualize something innovative will be small. And even if you did come up with that breakthrough idea, could the company implement it with a disengaged workforce?
P.S. If you’re looking for a real-life case study on how to create employee engagement, check out this article about Kronos employee Kristen Wylie, whose daughters were cast in the national touring production of “Annie the Musical”. Kristen was able to make her daughters’ dream come true with Kronos support.
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