Are You Watering Your Employee Engagement Seeds to Ensure an Abundant Harvest?

Tomorrow marks the celebration of Thanksgiving, a national holiday celebrated in the United States. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. It was originally celebrated as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of a fruitful abundant harvest.

This holiday reminds us to be thankful for both the people and circumstances in our lives.  Today, a fruitful harvest could be a metaphor for being healthy, a roof over your head, your loved ones, or a workplace that puts people (you) first.  Every day, leaders around the world till the soil and plant seeds, in the hopes of an abundant harvest (increased customer satisfaction and revenue growth).  One seed in the packet that is often planted – but rarely fertilized and watered – is the one labeled Employee Engagement.

Many companies conduct an annual Employee Engagement Survey, but choose to not act on the feedback.  Or, they “act” incorrectly by outsourcing the feedback to Human Resources to manage or by creating Culture Action Teams (basically, groups of employees who plan the holiday party and end up being thought of as the Fun Committee).

What is the most effective way to act?  Senior leaders must take responsibility for the culture they’ve created, listen to the feedback, and create a strategy to re-engage their most important asset – people.  The good news?  Employees want to be engaged and will respond to sincere efforts on the behalf of leaders to improve culture. What is the path forward?

Be Awesome.  Respond to this email with the words “I’m Awesome” and I’ll email you the first chapter of my new book for FREE.  The Second Edition of my book goes live in January, but you can have the first chapter now as a way for me to show my gratitude.  Thank you for being a part of my fruitful harvest, thank you for your continued support as I set out to fix every broken business culture in the world, and most of all – thank you for your leadership.  I’m grateful you are on my team!