Archive for Employee Engagement
Make Employees Happy by Nurturing Their Social Networks
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Nurture employee social networks
When the prestigious Harvard Business Review devotes most of an issue to happiness, you know that happiness is a serious topic. The magazine cover is entitled “The Value of Happiness: How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits.”
I particularly enjoyed the interview of Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert in an article entitled The Science Behind the Smile. He’s the author of the international best seller Stumbling on Happiness. The study of happiness has devolved into a science whereby you can measure a person’s happiness at a moment in time. Science is in. Intuition about someone’s happiness is out.
What Makes Employees Happy?
Dr. Gilbert is quite clear about what makes employees happy. He says that people are happiest when they are appropriately challenged, “when they’re trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach.” He adds, “Challenge and threat are not the same thing. People blossom when challenged and wither when threatened.”
When threatened, an employee will get the work done, he says, but thereafter do his best to undermine you, will feel no loyalty to the organization and never do more than he must. But employees will flourish when rewarded, based on a century of psychologists studying reward and punishment. Read More→
Giants Win Super Bowl of Social Media and Team Leadership
Posted by: | CommentsHurray, my hometown New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Yet another fourth quarter comeback for the Big Blue. They also won big with a record-breaking number of mentions on Twitter and Facebook.
The team’s owners scored big time with the leadership and enduring commitment to a philosophy that produces winners. It’s a lesson that other CEOs could emulate that I’ll discuss later in this post.
Super Bowl Site Traffic
Twitter tweeted that in the final three minutes of the Super Bowl there were an average of 10,000 tweets per second. That is mind-boggling, really – 10,000 x 60 x 3 = 1.8 million tweets.
The Washington Post reported that sports fans sent about 11.5 million comments during last night’s game over social media networks (quoting All Things Digital), about six times higher than last year’s game. The Giants were interacting with fans on Twitter and Facebook before, during and after the game. Read More→
Employee Engagement = Improved Financial Performance
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A highly engaged workforce translates into improved financial performance for companies. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? Yet many companies with command and control structures still don’t get it.
Because jobs are scarce now, senior management of these laggards don’t feel the need to engage with employees to reach the shared goal of making the company great. As a result, according to an Aon Hewitt study, companies that don’t fit its “Best Employers” category are losing shareholder value.
Smart companies understand, however, that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce. Read More→
Enlisting Employees as Brand Ambassadors Can Burnish Your Company’s Reputation
Posted by: | CommentsSlowly, but surely, more companies are seeing the wisdom of enlisting their employees as brand ambassadors. I’ve written about this several times, including the post 7 Steps to Making Your Employees Brand Ambassadors.
Employees are eager to help because if their company succeeds and grows, they will too. Employees who are actively engaged on social media as brand advocates help to burnish the company’s brand, they are motivated by being asked to take on the assignment, and customers receive better service.
CommProz.biz has identified 10 companies with outstanding brand ambassador programs. What companies would you add to their list?
