Maintaining employee engagement is vital for ongoing growth and success; happy staff lead to happy customers. In fact, measuring productivity can be a key indicator of employee engagement, according to Advance Systems. When your business is thriving, it’s probably because your staff are too. However engaging your staff in the midst of change can be an organisation’s greatest challenge.
Organisational change occurs for many reasons – positive and negative, success or downfall. But change is always necessary for further growth. However the biggest challenges might well come from the very people who facilitated its success in the first place.
Re-engaging Your Team
Northern Rock experienced this in 2008. Although the company stabilised and the Directors turned their attention towards recovery, some of their staff were struggling to move on.
The Customer Service and Sales Team are the ones whose energy is spent serving NR’s customers. So it was those employees in particular who needed re-focusing and re-energising in order to think ahead. But that would take more than the usual change management tactics.
Whilst their employees were still reeling from the after-effects of recent events, one of their Directors was wondering how to rally the team again. Whenever they tried to look forward, their rhetoric was still in the past. However it was time to put the past behind them. Mentally they needed to move to a new place.
NR approached Moving Performance and invited them to get involved. MP provided a unique opportunity for the team to face where they were and find the tools to move forward. We led them through a business-focused, creative experience that dramatically impacted the Team. All the objectives set out by NR were achieved and in fact the results were even more successful than had been imagined.
Watch Malcolm Hewitt, Director of Customer Service and Sales NORTHERN ROCK PLC full testimonial.
Ten months later the event was still referred to, with great enthusiasm. Through their annual feedback staff gave NR exceptional approval rates as a place to work, as well as achieving measurable improvements in mortgage and savings performance.
What may have seemed like a potentially risky solution to a very tangible problem, led to a huge pay-off for the Team, the business and its customers.
The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance
Employee engagement is a hot topic for every business. Content and well-motivated staff lead to happy and returning customers. So it’s worth investing in one in order to excel in the other. A 2013 report on The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance found, unsurprisingly, that senior executives consider a high-performing workforce a top business priority that’s essential for survival and growth.
If you have the time you can run through no less than 59 Ideas for Employee Engagement from various sources. However a recent article in the Harvard Business Review highlighted the importance of new approaches for engaging employees –
“No matter the size of your organization … You have to be willing to experiment with new policies and initiatives to demonstrate your company’s commitment to keeping employees motivated.”
Our believe is that music can be used as a powerful metaphor for business. We see it as a tool to help employees engage and in turn help organisations grow and develop in new ways.
Key Motivators for Employee Engagement –
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Communicate a Clear Vision
Organisations need to develop and communicate a clear vision through senior leadership and across multiple channels so that employees can understand and engage with that.
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Involve Employees in a Shared Purpose
Individuals need a clear understanding of how their role contributes to the strategy of the whole company and how their personal career goals align with that.
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Recognise High Performers
Just as a soloist can inspire the entire orchestra, empowering your star performers can energise the whole team. And by providing each member with tools for their own development, the whole team can raise its performance level.
The Lasting Impact of Engaging Teams
We recently worked with CISCO whose CIO Guillermo Diaz wrote afterwards –
Ben and his team are AMAZING! Their ability to quickly understand, simplify and orchestrate a 500 person team toward a common cultural mission was beyond my expectations! In 90 minutes, they took us out of our comfort zone and the outcome was a mindset of a FASTER, SIMPLER and TOGETHER Cisco IT – with a recording that I can’t get out of my head.
Thank you Ben and Team!!
We’re always thrilled to see the impact our work can have. We provide a unique experience to engage your employees and increase your team’s ability to perform at their very best. Whether it’s a conference or training day, we can create the opportunity you need to inspire change through the power of music.