If Elon Musk Can Colonize Mars, You Can Re-Engage Employees
Elon Musk has unveiled additional aspects of his grand plan for colonizing Mars. According to Musk, his rocket company, SpaceX, aims to land at least two cargo ships on the Red Planet five years from now to place power, mining and life support systems there for future flights. Rocket ships carrying crews would arrive in 2024. So my question to you is… if Musk can colonize Mars, why can’t you re-engage your employees?
A pervasive theory exists that re-engaging employees is difficult, if not impossible, and it’s simply not true. In order to re-engage workers, your frontline managers need to go to market consistently, repeating specific actions which meet your employee’s basic human needs. Now doesn’t that sound much easier than colonizing Mars? I thought so.
What does a sound Employee Engagement Roadmap look like?
1. Identify the handful of people who will be on the core team and champion the journey.
2. Gather baseline employee engagement data, so you know your starting point.
3. Create your Manager Action Plan – specific action items managers will act on and deploy in the trenches with employees.
4. Conduct a Manager Town Hall Meeting to set expectations and share the actions with managers.
5. Managers execute on the Action Plan.
6. Gather follow-up employee engagement data, hold managers accountable for the results, and course correct if necessary.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 every six months or annually.
Why is it so important to move forward according to this Roadmap? Because traditional approaches to employee engagement (outsource it to Human Resources) don’t work. In order to create a new reality for yourself as a leader and for your company, you must engage your senior leaders and frontline managers in your journey. If you do not, you will continue to get mediocre results year after year, and mediocrity does not breed success.
BE AWESOME! Do your senior leaders need to hear this message live? Invite me to speak at your organization or engage me via Webinar. Either way, your senior leaders will leave educated about employee engagement and inspired to do things differently. Kind of like Elon Musk.
Jill Christensen is an employee engagement expert, best-selling author, and international keynote speaker. She was recently named a Top 100 Global Employee Engagement Influencer, authored the best-selling book, If Not You, Who? Cracking the Code of Employee Disengagement, and works with the best and brightest global leaders to improve productivity and retention, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth. Jill can be reached at +1.303.999.9224 or jill@jillchristensenintl.com.