Thoughts on Improving Employee Engagement

In reviewing the article from Gallup, "Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now" there are a couple of key takeaways we should keep in mind when trying to raise employee engagement and satisfaction.

"If employees truly are a company's best asset, then their care and support should be a priority."

This is often given lip service by management but when it is it is seen for just that quickly by the team members. Employee support needs to happen from the top down and be measured from the ground up.

"Each person's potential extends well beyond his or her job description. And tapping that potential means recognizing how an employee's unique set of beliefs, talents, goals, and life experiences drives his or her performance, personal success, and well-being."

Building profiles of team member's skill sets and experiences, even when not applicable to their current work, is an excellent way to help plan for their growth and future success. Understand the people not just how they fit their job descriptions you'll have a much better perspective on what is necessary to keep them engaged.
"Real change occurs at the local workgroup level, but it happens only when company leaders set the tone from the top."

We often forget even though the work occurs "in the trenches" that management and support needs to be done from there as well. We can't expect people to accept guidance from "on high" when they don't feel the people providing that guidance have any real connection or insight into their daily struggles. As the old saying goes, "think globally, act locally."
"Companies should coach managers to take an active role in building engagement plans with their employees, hold managers accountable, track their progress, and ensure that they continuously focus on emotionally engaging their employees."

Companies spend time, effort, and money training their managers how to get the most productivity from their people as well as dealing with non-performers. A fraction of that is spent on keeping people engaged and positively focused on their contributions to their team and the company as a whole. We assume some of this is common sense, but in practicality it fails to be so. Taking time to develop an organization wide strategy around engagement and satisfaction can reap substantial benefits in the long term for both team members and the organization as a whole.
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Sections, Section Groups, and Notebooks in OneNote There's a lot of interest around when is it right to use a section, section group, or notebook in OneNote to organize your information. I'll admit it can be very confusing so here's some rules of thumb I follow when managing my own. Notebooks * Use when you're likely to need to share content. * Allows you to isolate materials around large topic areas (work vs. home, large projects, etc.) * Good for materials you may not need to access all the time (open the notebook when you need it, close it when you don't) Sections * Useful for breaking down notebooks into logical groupings (work - meetings, notes, plans, schedules, etc.) * Can be secured by password for better protection * Can be color coded for easy reference Section Groups * When you need larger subdivisions in a notebook (Work - Projects (Section Group) - Project A (Section)) * Helpful when archiving content into a master notebook If you're organizing your personal content, don't worry about getting it right the first time. If you're organizing collaborative content, adding a page showing the organizational structure can be a boon to anyone using your notebook.

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Six Keys to Employee Engagement