Employee Engagement Training Outline

Declare Their Mission

It is much easier to get excited about a mission than it is to get excited about a job. The first step to engagement is to change your mind-set about how you see work. Changing it can be as simple as changing the word you use to describe your role. Referring to it as a job tends to imply drudgery, and general discontent. It implies that you have to do it even though you don’t want to. When the connotation of the word is like that, it creates the same mental images. When that happens, it tends to create the same feelings in you as it does in the images. Changing the word you refer to your craft with to “mission” can really change how you feel about your craft. It creates more positive, more determined images. The word “mission” implies objectives, determination, and a good ending. This is essentially changing your standard language from pessimism to optimism. Pessimists are usually the workers who use words like “I can’t,” “It’s too hard,” or “I’ll never do that again.” It tends to be the case that they who believe they will lose are defeated before the battle even begins. Being engaged means starting with the belief that it is possible to win, that the mission can be accomplished, and that you will work hard enough to make it happen. You can repeat to yourself an abstract way of interpreting your work to motivate you to keep doing it. Teachers, for example, often negatively see their work as grading papers, lecturing in front of students, and yelling at misbehaving learners. A positive teacher, however, may instead choose to see it as forming the next generation of lawyers, doctors, and leaders. The latter is more likely to be motivating to a number of workers because it offers a mission, declares a purpose to care about the work. This care for work is the most basic, and most important step towards employee engagement, and any employee can do this, pumping themselves up to give their best every day at work.

Achieve Whenever Possible

When one is engaged at work, one is more likely to seek higher quality in work produced. That quality can be sought in achieving things at work, whether it is small or grand objectives. Getting yourself to achieve something at work can be a great motivator to do more. The feeling of achievement tends to be addictive, as tiring as it can be to get that fix, and it is an extremely productive drug to have. A worker that is constantly racking up achievements, sealing deals, making breakthroughs, or meeting the quota is not only an inspiration to others to put their backs into their mission, it provides the achiever with the motivation to keep doing better. This is fantastic for company and worker progress and quality. A worker who is achieving something is exhibiting a good work ethic and focus on accomplishing the mission that the job sets them too. For example, Jim may be a worker at a science facility, and wants to set the goal of making a breakthrough in chemistry. With a goal set, the achievement has been sighted; he has to figure out how to get that breakthrough. However, before he begins, he has to set smaller goals to get a sense of stepping up to certain achievements. He can start with the small achievement of keeping his workspace constantly clean and spill-free. Then, he can move on to the achievement of writing respectable research proposals constantly for his facility. On and on, he keeps taking steps until he finishes all preliminary and prerequisite steps of achievement, and finally, he’s there, and achieves a breakthrough. It is commonly thought that constantly being active will tire one out, but constant activity actually is a powerful counter to lack of engagement. After all, the more one does something, the more likely one is to love it. We discuss this example and more within this training module.

Build The Home Base

Organising your workspace to help you achieve more is a good way to encourage employee engagement. This does not have to be a solo employee effort either; the company can also engage in building the workspace with and for the employee. The best companies tend to have pre-designed teamwork-encouraging workspaces, or have no set parameters for what a workspace has to look like besides basic cleanliness, allowing a worker to organise and design the home base of the mission however they choose.