For years I’ve professed the value, the significance, and the critical weight of a business having its culture of engagement.
It’s been years since I’ve expressed concisely the actual meaning of that phrase, a culture of engagement.
It deserves definition because it is more than we think.
- It’s more than encouraging employees to engage in their work, their teams, their company.
- It’s more than striving to increase that number of engaged employees.
- It’s more than working to improve the engagement already present.
A business culture goes deeper. Put too simply a culture of engagement is the culture that embraces employee engagement as a key element throughout the business. But that leaves the component terms still undefined.
I’ll be direct.
- Culture is the professional values, behaviors, and attitudes by which a business lives.
- Engagement is the investment of the employee’s knowledge, skills, time, energy and creativity in the work expected.
Let’s put them together.
A culture of engagement is professional values and behaviors that support employees investing their knowledge, skills, time, energy and creativity in their work.
Let me be even more direct.
- Culture of engagement means the business writes, expects, and measures an engagement competency for every position. _____
- Culture of engagement means leaders are (held) responsible for defining engagement relevant to their company and communicating same in clear, relevant language throughout the organization. _____
- Culture of engagement means managers receive ample support in recognizing and comprehending the meaning of employee engagement for every position they supervise. _____
- Culture of engagement means the entire organization comprehends a common definition and specific expectations of engagement regarding their position and function. _____
- Culture of engagement means continuous evaluation (more than mere measurement) of engagement and its effectiveness throughout the business. _____
If the maximum score is 20 for each of those bullets, does your company score 100?
Tags: business culture, Creativity, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management
