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Top Tens of Employee Engagement * Actionable Advice from Industry Leaders

Back to blog homepage for: Strategic Employee Recognition: by Derek Irvine

David Zinger just published his latest e-book collection: The Top Tens of Employee Engagement. A collection of advice on engagement from members of the Employee Engagement Network, The Top Tens is a solid handbook of ideas for engagement along a broad spectrum of needs.

While I’m thrilled to have been included with my “10 Steps to Realising Strategic Engagement,” I was particularly impressed with how well the advice from so many contributors aligned with each other.

For example, Jennifer Schulte of Mars offered “Strategies to Impact Engagement across an Organisation.” Her recommendations to Start at the Top, Focus on a Bold Goal, and Celebrate and Replicate Those Who Can Engage are an excellent compliment to my advice to Secure Executive Sponsorship, Define Clear Goals for Your Corporate Culture, and Frequently Recognise Contributors in a Timely Way.

Considering the importance of employee recognition – telling employees specifically how their efforts contributed to company success and how greatly they are valued in the organisation – to creating a workplace environment in which employees want to engage, I was also quite pleased to see the number of people who mentioned recognition in one way or another. In no particular order (and not an exhaustive list):

Wally Bock: “Praise effort and highlight superior performance”

Sanna Wolsteholme: “Praise. Catch people doing things right.”

Terrence Seamon: “Appreciate the people that you have. … Give kudos to your people as often as you can. … Say thank you.”

Kelly Eskridge: “Give thanks. … When you thank people for something, there’s a much better chance they’ll do it again.”

David Marklew: “Show some appreciation, do it often, let it flow freely.”

And the final word from David Zinger himself, his seventh tip on engagement:

“Employees are responsible for their own engagement, we are all accountable for everyone’s engagement. No one has a bigger role in engagement than the individual themselves – if engagement is to be, it is up to me. We are accountable for other people’s engagement and we can influence their engagement – if engagement is to be, it is up to we.”

With that in mind, what are you doing to influence the engagement of those around you? Are you saying thanks? Are you actively looking for ways you can express appreciation to your colleagues? It’s certainly a solid start on the road to engagement.

 

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Editor's Welcome

 

Hello! And welcome back as we enter 2012, with a busy year ahead of us all. With talk of double-dip recessions, a possible partial or even full break-up of the Eurozone and unemployment rates set to hit nearly 9%, topics such as organisational streamlining, staff resilience and talent management are likely to be on many an HR professional's lips over the next 12 months.
 
But to lighten the gloom here in the UK, we also have the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and its attendant public holidays to look forward to at the start of June. Followed by two weeks of Olympic Games from 27 July to 12 August and the Paralympics from 29 August to 9 September, each generating their own excitement, but also issues to work through for hard-pressed HR departments trying to sort out the multifarious staffing issues in advance.
 
So with an interesting but challenging year to come, HRZone promises to be with you, supporting you all the way and providing our usual insightful blend of news, analysis, community blogs and expert comment to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. As ever, we love to hear from you too so feel free to either post your words of wisdom to our blog section yourself or, in the case of longer, more in-depth ‘expert voice’ articles, drop me a line with any ideas to cath.everett@siftmedia.co.uk.....
 
Cath Everett
HRZone Editor 
 
 
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