iClarify | Simplify | Engage

Walk around the office and chat one-on-one with people, ask them about themselves, their day-to-day work, their kids, how their weekend was. If you make time to also walk around your corporate office and talk to people individually, they remember that and will cut you a little slack when you’ve got to rush out the door the next time. It also allows you to get to know your people well, what makes them tick and what makes them successful or what makes them do their best. Knowing your people and having a relationship or personal connection with them, however small, allows your organization to want to perform better. Those employees become a lot more willing to go above and beyond the call of duty for you. Just make sure you are consistent. You don't want to be that manager who tries something once or twice and then gets too busy to keep it up.

Identify and explain your employee value proposition (EVP). An employee value proposition (EVP) is the employment deal or promise that you make to employees the moment they start to work for you. Every organization has one, whether they know it or not. Some EVPs are better than others. By identifying what that promise is, and assuming that it’s good stuff, you can then begin to share it regularly to remind employees of the great things to promise to provide for them.  For example, what are the benefits of working at your organization?   Maybe you’re a small organization and don’t have the revenue to provide big-corporate-style employee benefit programs, but you can offer flexibility in scheduling and recognition programs that provide dividends when you earn them or maybe you can allow employees to bring their dogs to work.  Every part of the employment deal counts, but if they don’t know all about it, you’re missing a vital opportunity. Explaining you...

Think about how you act everyday; employees learn more about you from your behaviour than they do from your messages. You tell employees that they are important to you, but: You never ask them how their day is going; it’s because of your crazy schedule. You walk by them all the time with your head down, thumbing your Blackberry. You don’t have time to answer their questions or meet with them. If this is the case, you can post messages on your Intranet site and send them all the memos in the world about how important they are to you but because of what you do, but they won’t believe you.  If employees really are important to you, you need to show them, not tell them.  Then, and only then, will they get the message.

Giving employees a way to voice their thoughts, opinions and suggestions about the business has multiple impacts. Offering opportunities for employees to give feedback allow them to: Become more engaged as they feel someone is listening. Come up with creative solutions to operational problems. Share intelligence to which leaders are not exposed. Inform leaders of what employees are thinking and what their needs are. Ignoring employee input makes as much sense as ignoring customer input. If you’ve ever watched the reality show UNDERCOVER BOSS , you’d know that until executives get their hands dirty, it’s difficult for them to run their business well. The show follows high-level corporate executives as they slip anonymously into the lowest level jobs within their companies to find out what their employees really think about the business and to discover/uncover ways to improve the business. It’s tough for leaders to conduct an undercover boss operation in their own organizat...

Engagement is the intellectual and emotional inspiration that an employee feels in an organization, which propels them to always do their best at their job. It is also a state of mind that encourages employees to want not only to remain in the same workplace but also recommend it to their friends and family as a great place to work. When your employees are engaged, they are more productive and your business is made stronger and more profitable, as a result. Your employees also become your most important ambassadors of your company’s brand. Engage them and keep them engaged and it will be tough for you to fail. Engagem ent is not a one-time deal. “If you aren’t always moving it forward, you’ll end up slipping back,” says Peter Mayne, Director of Culture and Engagement from Farm Credit Canada. Farm Credit Canada scores more than   80% every year on their engagement survey, as established by Hewitt’s Engagement model. Treat employees the way you’d like to be treated. T ...

Clarity is number one for me. If the prose isn’t clear to the reader, then the writer has failed. Readers should not have to read sentences over again to understand their meaning. Novels, white papers, articles all need clarity. Simplicity is luxury and necessity in writing and harder to achieve than complexity. Keeping it simple and using plain language is not dumbing things down; it’s keeping things smart. Engagement is what everyone wants to achieve. When we have engagement, we get new clients, followers, readers, listeners, friends, relationships, accomplishments, successes and happiness. Novels, white papers and articles that engage, also sell, reach, inspire and captivate.    I do more than write; I clarify, I simplify and I engage.