Easy Strategy for Engaging Staff

You can increase your likelihood of retaining employees by ensuring people have stretch goals where they feel supported to work at the edge of their abilities.  Some people do this naturally.  They push themselves to grow and keep pushing to enhance their skills.  Think of how engaged these people usually are.  More often, employees may continue to learn, but are not necessarily challenging themselves.  The “I may not be able to do this” feeling behind a challenging stretch goal is mentally stimulating and invigorating.  As long as people feel safe and supported in working on a goal, it is the human need for mental invigoration that turns this feeling into increased engagement and retention. 

Consider ways that your whole staff could work together in identifying and working toward individualized, challenging goals.  As long as you set up the structures so your people feel safe in planning, implementing, and working toward stretch goals, you don’t even need to be the main support system.  They can help identify their own support or accountability buddies.  You just need to get them to think about what challenging goal would lead them to feel invigorated by their work and then help them set up structures and support that would allow them to work toward their goals. 

To learn more about creating stimulating work for your employees that, you can jump 44 minutes into Dr. Susan David’s “Employee Engagement:  Mastering the Essential Components” webinar.   The entire webinar discusses six essential components of employee engagement and takes a little less than an hour. 

David, Susan. (Retrieved August 13, 2018).  Employee Engagement:  Mastering the Essential Components.  Virgin Pulse.  https://community.virginpulse.com/susan-david-replay-june-2018?submissionGuid=f0e50178-3ba2-47bf-9ee7-291cc63ec786