Develop

What do you wish every leader would do to increase workplace engagement and productivity?
The most important thing leaders can do to impact productivity is to display to all employees that they’re a great listener and always willing to act on employees’ feedback. Ignored employees easily become unproductive ones.

The most effective way for all employees to be heard is through an anonymous employee engagement survey administered through a third party. In today’s environment, many employers express hesitation at launching employee engagement surveys given COVID challenges, yet never has employee input been more critical. A well-developed and administered engagement survey provides a roadmap for an organization to mitigate key organizational issues and to further enhance employee involvement and initiative.

What should an organization do before promoting an employee to a 
leadership role?
An organization who has identified an employee to move into a leadership position should commit to helping them succeed by investing time in developing basic survival skills for the position such as delegation, coaching, hiring and team development. Too many organizations simply drop new managers into the deep end of the pool.

Organizations should also observe employees who display leadership skills without wanting to move into managerial positions, and identify ways to harness their skills by involving them in key projects, cross functional teams and special assignments. Not all employees strive to manage people and they but many have the attributes to lead and influence informally.

In your career, what was your greatest challenge?
My greatest challenge, based on consulting with organizations of all sizes and scopes, is to help them understand that every employee behavior and every business practice informs the culture of that organization.

I encourage organizations to always be auditing their environments for signals that represent and inform their messaging, from employee diversity to benefits, physical layout to signage, remote work policies to attrition, and more.