Committing to Employee Engagement - Lessons from Community Colleges, Part 2

In Part 1, we looked at the five lessons the CCSSE (Community College Survey of Student Engagement) had learned in its five years of studying student engagement.

This week, let's look at their "Five Strategies That Work" to increase the level of engagement campus-wide.

#1: Set High Expectations and Clear Goals.

Once in a while I'll hear an Executive Director or top manager say something like, "I can barely get my staff to come into work on their scheduled days, let alone do something extra like take an online class." That same manager likely sets pretty low expectations in other areas of her team's performance. Likely, the expectations are pretty much about all staff can meet.

Interestingly, in the community colleges study the researchers found that you could tell, almost instantly, what the expectations and commitment of management is as soon as you walk onto a campus. The actions - and the focus of problems and solutions - clearly reflect the attitude of management. Is the focus on the team's skills or on their deficiencies? Is the discussion centered on challenging problems or difficult people?

Interestingly, "Institutions that expect students [employees] to perform well use language that communicates students' [employees'] value and potential. This language helps set high expectations for students [employees] - and it is contagious."

#2: Focus on the Front Door.

We're all concerned about turnover. In the college setting they refer to it as "attrition," but it's the exact same problem.

One solution that works: focus on people as they come in the front door. From the first moment of hire, look for ways to actively engage the person in his or her work and work environment. Make sure the job is both challenging and rewarding, and help the person make social connections as well. Getting through those first 90 days often spells success for the employee - or increases your turnover rate.

#3: Improve Early Education and Training.

Once again, the study found that the first semester of the person's work was the most important. This translates directly to our work too: employees who feel like the have not been given the initial training they need to do the jobs assigned to them typically are the first to leave or, if they stay, the least engaged.

Early, specific training - especially during the first 90 days - is crucial for building a stong, engaged team.

#4: Use Engaging Techniques in Training and Education.

Even in a college-based study, researchers found that the time that the individuals actually spent studying and learning was in high competition with their other life demands: work, family and friends.

In a caregiving setting, the time spent in training is even more thinly sliced. Making that training as engaging and effective as possible will help the employee gain maximum benefit from it. Certainly, doing just the minimum - consisting in some cases of the old "read and sign" approach to training - will likely create an environment where training is just one more element competing for limited time in the day of the employee. It will lose value - it will become a barrier, not a benefit.

This can be easily remedied by creating or utilizing training approaches that engage, challenge and interest the employee. Training of this sort has multiple positive outcomes for both the individual and the company.

In addition to engaging training, however, the study found that having the opportunity to discuss what the person has learned with a supervisor (or instructor) dramatically increases the person's engagement. When someone else is actively invested in the growth of the employee, benefits are considerable.

#5: Make Engagement Inescapable

In the college setting, this happens by making meetings with professors mandatory on a regular basis. It happens by making class discussions an integral part of every class. They can require collaborative projects, connecting students with other students.

In the work setting, engagement clearly needs to be just as intentional. Requiring goal-setting meeting with supervisors on a regular basis, for example, can facilitate those one-on-one meetings that are clearly valuable in building engagement.

Fostering team interaction through regularly scheduled pot-lucks, parties, note-exchanges or secret pals are examples of ways to make engagement virtually inescapable for every member of your team.

Employee engagement has clear benefits. Learning from these college experiences and applying them in our own work settings can help us find solutions to building highly engaged, successful teams.

EasyCEU.com: CEUs for senior care professionals · aQuireTraining.com: Staff training for caregivers · Apply2Care.com: Caregiver job applications right to your inbox

Committing to Employee Engagement - Lessons from Community Colleges, Part 1

You know all the benefits that an engaged workforce can produce: less turnover, happier clients and a much stronger bottom line.

You've probably been taking steps to look at ways to actively increase your own employees' engagements - we all have been.

So when an article came across my email box the other day titled "Committing to Student Engagement: Reflections on CCSSE's First Five Years" I opened it with interest. CCSSE is the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, and five years into their survey process here's what they have learned about engagement:

Lesson #1: Be intentional.

The study talks about students who are busy juggling school, family and work. These students don't have time to seek out study sessions or get excited about the school's bigger picture (sounds like our staff, doesn't it?). The conclusion: "Engagement doesn't happen by accident; it happens by design. Community colleges, therefore, must be deliberate and aggressively create opportunities to involve students so that engagement becomes central to every student's experience." Substitute the word "employees" in place of "student" and "company" in place of "colleges" and you get the idea. We've got to actively work to make engagement happen in the workplace, as well.


Lesson #2: Engagement matters more to some people than to others.

Some people need to be engaged to work at their best. Others work quietly, thoroughly and maintain a level of loyalty and engagement that seems to come naturally to them. The lesson here is not to look at your employee group as all one type, but to recognize that different people will have different needs for engagement, and will need different methods to effectively engage them in their work.

Lesson #3: Part-time people are often not considered in plans to increase engagement.

We all have part-time workers who fill out our schedules and help us adjust to the varying needs of our clients. Do our engagement programs consider their needs? Do they effectively draw in those individuals as well as the full time folks?

Lesson #4: Information is our friend.

Sometimes transparency in data and information is vital to building an engaged group. Do your staff understand your goals and progress made to achieve those goals? It's pretty easy for staff to see large monthly rents or fees, do the quick math, and come to the conclusion that companies are making tons and tons of money, not considering the real costs of running a business. Sometimes a little transparency in this and other operational areas goes a long, long way to increasing employee engagement.

Lesson #5: Look behind the survey results.

You may do regular employee satisfaction surveys - if so, you are to be commended. But taking the time to look behind sheer aggregate numbers may yield rich veins of information that you can use to strengthen engagement.

Next time we'll look at what the same study presented as strategies for improving engagement - excellent ideas and plans that we can steal a little from as well.

EasyCEU.com: CEUs for senior care professionals · aQuireTraining.com: Staff training for caregivers · Apply2Care.com: Caregiver job applications right to your inbox