Wellington West a Winnipeg Winner

According to work done by Hewitt Associates and communicated in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine, Wellington West Capital Inc. placed first in the list to Top 50 employers in Canada.

They were number 2 last year, they did try harder, and now they are number one.

Congratulations Wellington West!

To be the winner Wellington West had to score high on 17 areas of employee satisfaction. Some of the factors that create employee engagement are:

1. All the basics of HR are done well.
2. Leaders inspire workers and develop winning strategies to attain company goals.
3. Employees are engaged both intellectually and emotionally – willing to exercise extra effort as they work beyond the basics.
4. The culture is clear and there is a good fit between people and culture.
5. There are exceptional relationship between supervisors and employees.

In addition engagement is not just a feel good issue, employees don’t just feel like owners, they are owners. Here is a quote from Charlene Birdsall, an investment adviser in Winnipeg:

Birdsall says that, in part, the No. 1 rank­ing stems from the fact that Wellington is still private, and advisers and other em­ployees own 91% of the company. “Being an owner, you want to make sure the firm looks good,” she says.

Engagement occurs strongly when we own our work and even own some of the company.

Well done Wellington West – You are a terrific exemplar of the Engaged Way.

Technorati Tags : employee engagement, Wellington West, ownership

Turn me on to engagement

Nora Jones has a wonderful song called, Turn Me On. Although it is about a personal relationship it made me think about employee engagement.

 

Here are a few lines from the song:

Like a flower waiting to bloom
Like a lightbulb in a dark room
Like the desert waiting for the rain
I’m just sitting here waiting for you
To come on home and turn me on
Turn me on

Are you waiting for someone else to turn the switch for you being fully engaged? Or is someone you work with expecting you to turn on their switch? Relationships can play a key role in engagement yet I believe it begins when we turn ourselves on to engagement.

We sometime believe that we must feel engaged to engage in work. Paradoxically, often even when we don’t feel engaged — yet engage in the task at hand, we find our level of engagement increasing. The emotion of engagment will often follow engaged behaviour.

Get engaged:

1. Determine the switches that turn on your level of engagement. Flip the switch.

2. See how well you can act as a catalyst to help another person flip their switch into higher levels of engagement.

3. As we approach the holiday season remember that it is also important to disengage from work to refresh ourselves.

Don’t forget to turn off the lights when you head home.

Technorati Tags : employee engagement, Zinger, work

Employee Engagement and Co-creation

Can you imagine co-creating engagement in your workplace?

Jennifer Rice defines co-creation as: “an open, ongoing collaboration between employees and customers to define and create products, services, experiences, ideas and information.”

Co-creation is often a collaboration between employees and customers. Co-creation is a pathway to fuller employee engagement where the organization, management, and employees work (and play) together to create a full engagement picture on the canvas of work?

James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore  completed a manifesto on co-creation rules this December at Change This. The “Change This” site is producing extraordinary manifestos on a wide range of very helpful topics.

Apply these 17 rules for co-creation and engagement:

1. Yes, and
2. Make an offer
3. Set the scene
4. Make your customers look good
5. Create opportunity
6. Play
7. Understand the environment
8. Work at it
9. Love the 1%ers
10. Get vernacular
11. Make mistakes
12. Lower barriers
13. Let the mess show
14. Share your secrets
15. Be changed
16. Show the humanity
17. There are no rules

Get engaged:

1. Click here to read more about Cherkoff and Moore’s co-creation rules. Determine how you can apply these rules to employee engagement.

2. Select the top 5 rules that have the most leverage to engage everyone in working at creating a co-engaged workplace.

Technorati Tags : co-creation, Zinger, employee engagement

Engagement: Invitation not imposition

How do you feel when you receive an invitation?

Make employee engagement an invitation to others, don’t allow employee engagement to become an imposition.

Successful employee engagement is based on invitations not impositions. Although both words start with the letter “i” the similarities end there. Full engagement cannot be coerced or forced.

Invitation is defined as a request to participate, to be present, to take part in something, or tempting allurement. When we work with employee engagement do employees feel the urge to take part in something?  Do we invite employees to be fully present at work? Do they feel a part of something meaningful?  

Have you ever thought of engagement as tempting allurement and what this would mean for the workplace?

Imposition means a compulsory order that does not originate from a voluntary agreement.  It is the act of imposing something or an uncalled-for burden. Do employees feel that engagement is a compulsory order — get engaged or else! How successful will engagement be when choice is limited and it feels like a burden to the very person we are trying to foster engagement with?

One of the most common reasons people resist change is because they feel coerced. Don’t be an agent of coercion when you are trying to change the workplace to higher levels of engagement.

Engagement as invitation has parallels with caring and respect for others. Engagement as imposition has parallels with coercion and human resources more as resources than as humans.

Get Engaged:

1. Do you feel invited in your workplace to engage in work that will make a difference?

2. Notice where and when engagement may feel like an imposition or burden to employees and determine steps to transform coercive imposition into caring invitation.

3. Compose an actual invitation to engagement and send it to employees. Put RSVP on the invitation and prepare to host a workplace where everyone is invited to be fully engaged.

Technorati Tags : employee engagement, Zinger, invitation