You say your employees are not engaged and not performing well…

By Gina Abudi, on May 24th, 2011

You just might be the problem!

As a manager you have responsibility for engaging your employees. Yes, of course they have responsibilities too; but engaging them is the responsibility of the company and the management. Disengaged employees are just not interested in their role and often do not perform well on the job. They have, effectively, “checked out.” Too often I have seen management staff who believe the problem is with the employee; and it may well be. But it may also be with the manager or the leadership team in general. Let’s focus on that for this article.

Any of the following contributes to creating a disengaged employee:

Limited communication from leadership
Lack of acknowledgement from an immediate manager for work on a project
Lack of professional or personal development opportunities
No or very minimal feedback provided on job performance on a regular basis
Being given more work than ever before with less time to get it accomplished
Significant changes within the company leaving the employee with a sinking feeling and that he/she will soon be out of a job anyway

I’m sure you can add to this list. What have you seen as contributing to disengaging employees?

These are really not difficult to fix to improve the situation. Too often however, it just gets worse and worse until the employee walks out the door. Undoubtedly, some employees cannot be re-engaged in the organization; it may be time for them to move on. But I’d venture a guess that the majority of a company’s disengaged employees, they would want to re-engage them and fix the issue. Too often companies lose really great talent simply because they are not paying attention. What a shame.

Any of the following helps to re-engage employees:

Reason disengaged	Options to re-engage
Limited communication from leadership	Keep employees apprised of what is going on within the organization. Increase communication flow from the leadership through emails, regular “all hands” meetings, a company newsletter or portal. Leadership should get out of their offices and walk around to talk with employees on a regular basis.
Lack of acknowledgement from an immediate manager for work on a project	Regularly communicate with your employees and thank them for a job well done on a project. Often working on projects is above and beyond many employees regular day-to-day responsibilities – acknowledging the work they do on a project that impacts the department or the company as a whole is a great way to let them know they are appreciated.
Lack of professional or personal development opportunities	Every employee deserves opportunities to grow themselves personally and professionally. Provide a variety of opportunities for your employees to develop including: attendance at seminars, training classes/workshops, time to work on strategic projects
No or very minimal feedback provided on job performance on a regular basis	Provide employees regular feedback on their job performance – not just once or twice a year for the regularly scheduled performance review. In small conversations, let them know how they are doing, their strengths and development areas and learn from their how things are going from their perspective. If there is a problem with an employee, it should be addressed immediately – not months down the road.
Being given more work than ever before with less time to get it accomplished	We all have to do more with less these days. But we don’t have to make it so that we pile so much to do on our employees that they just can’t see a way out from under the pile. Keep in mind that employees can only do so much work – too much on their plate and they can’t do as good a job as they would like to do. Provide them with technology and training to help them manage increased workloads. Offer employees who are going above and beyond some comp time, attendance at a conference of their choice, or other options as a “thank you” for pulling some extra weight.
Significant changes within the company leaving the employee with a sinking feeling and that he/she will soon be out of a job anyway	This goes back to communication (first bullet above). Through regular communication from higher-ups in the organization – employees feel comfortable about what is going on around them and are more able to handle changes in their environment. Keeping employees updated on how the business is going helps them feel vested in its success. Don’t think you can keep secrets if the business is having problems – they already know about it! Share information – they are your employees and can be trusted with what you have to tell them.

Your thoughts? Please share with others in the Comment field below. Thanks!

Gina Abudi

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