Building a Culture of Engagement

Credit: Visuallys / Visuallys AI Team Winter-Spring 2023 with Midjourney

For a long time, employee engagement strategies have taken general forms, aimed at bringing benefits to a large number of people by taking advantage of economies of scale. Examples include public transportation payment initiatives, free access to the gym, free lunch every week, etc. Do these popular formats have a real impact on your employee's engagement ? Will offering fruit to your teams will improve your retention rate? Will their sense of belonging and loyalty to your company be grow stronger? Are you really

saving money by budgeting 10K annually for croissants and scrambled eggs?

Not necessarily…

Before you commit to paying for your teams' breakfast every week, let's sit down for a moment and look at what profile you're dealing with.

In order to implement relevant engagement strategies, regardless of

your industry, you need to identify your employee's sources of intrinsic motivation. Although everyone is unique, similar characteristics are often found among groups of professionals. Within the same company, you may need to implement different actions for your sales team.

or for your engineering department.

Co-developing an action plan directly with your teams aimed at improving their engagement will undoubtedly allow you to:

• to implement solutions unique to your business (which positively differentiate you from the competition);

• concretely and quickly improve team morale;

• empower each team member in achieving the goals they have set….After all, who is better placed than them to show you what could be improved and how? #bottomup

Right...but how do we do start ?

Here is a recent example. At one of my clients we implemented a multitude of actions in collaboration with the managers. More than 40 managers were mobilized to impact an ecosystem of 450 employees, mainly mechanical, software and biomedical engineers.

We started with focus groups, which allowed us to better understand the motivations and expectations of the teams. We then set up short automated weekly surveys to identify the strengths and opportunities for each team. We created communities of practice for managers and brought in experts to train them on the topics that interested them most.

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Results after 12 months?

- + 5 commitment points (after 3 years of consecutive decline)

- 9% reduction in turnover

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It would be impossible to list here all the initiatives that have been implemented as they vary from one team to another. One thing is certain, a clear methodology has allowed a group of managers to connect with their teams in a sincere and transparent way.

Human resources management is not my cup of tea…you might say?

I get it. In general, it is the best experts who move towards management positions. While you have a perfect understanding of your technical subject, management propels you into an unknown territory, which can be confusing, even stressful.

This is then a sign that it would be wise to bring a third party into the equation.

and learn from their expertise. An external consultant or coaching will allow you

to quickly transform your vision into action.

Ready to get started?

Article written by Maé Ustarroz

Management and Communication Specialist

Founder of Pangea Strategy

Pangea is a network of experts specialized in strategic communication, change management and management consulting. Our mission is to support impactful organizations in their growth and performance.