Training Industry Magazine - Leadership 2015 Special Edition - 12

BY BARRY ROSEN

EMPLOYEE
ENGAGEMENT

FOR A DISTRIBUTED WORKFORCE
PRACTICAL IDEAS FROM THE PEOPLE-SIDE OF COLLABORATION
Engaged employees are a hallmark of successful companies,
whether employees share a workspace or are distributed across
the world. When employees are engaged, companies perform
better. They achieve better business results, better processes for
getting those results, and better relationships between people
responsible for contributing to those processes.
Achieving meaningful employee engagement is a complex
proposition. Recent surveys of American workers and leaders
indicate declining engagement scores. A new generation of
discerning workers is entering the market and people from
different countries, cultures and time zones mingle in a virtual
workplace.
How can we leverage proven practices of employee engagement
to bring out the best in every employee - and the growing number
of contract workers - regardless of location, age, gender, language
or ethnicity?

GUIDING BELIEFS ABOUT EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Beliefs guide strategy. Here are three beliefs about how to engage
employees in the workplace:
1. Collaboration helps everyone perform better, regardless of
where they are located. Helping each other get things done
works better than ignoring each other or getting in the way.
Even top competitors know when and how to collaborate.
2. Employee engagement is an essential ingredient for effective
collaboration. People who contribute to mission-critical
activities and processes are well-positioned to recommend or
decide on changes to the way work gets done.
3. People are better at collaborating on the hard stuff when
working face-to-face. Physical presence triggers empathy.
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Asking for people's input feels more natural when walking
the halls. Spontaneously calling a meeting to resolve an issue
or make a quick decision is par for the co-located worksite.
Therefore, making conscious choices about how to engage
distributed employees is the starting point for integrating
them into mission-critical processes of innovation and
continuous improvement.

THE TAKEAWAY
Knowing and doing are like night and day, and the day-to-day
doing part is highly recommended. If you practice this guideline,
you won't have to work so hard getting input or authorizing
workers in different locations. You will also put in less effort
convincing employees to contribute discretionary effort or asking
them to do it for the team.
The guideline is a riff on one of the most important human
relations dictums of civilized societies. In fact, we might call this
the Golden Rule of Employee Engagement: Engage distributed
employees in a way that you would most want to be engaged.

THE "DO UNTO OTHERS" OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
The goal of engagement is to tap employee intelligence, initiative
and discretionary effort. Companies can receive important benefits
from making conscious choices about including employees and all
key stakeholders in the decisions that shape their lives at work.
As workers, we accept a leader's invitation or request to engage
when we believe the opportunity will help us meet important
needs (e.g., for effectiveness, contribution, meaning, influence,
respect, safety or recognition). It makes sense, therefore, for
leaders to try to think and feel like an employee before clicking
the "send" button to engage a distributed worker or team.
Training Industry Magazine - Leadership 2015 Special Edition

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