Employee Engagement Now: What Works

Employee Engagement Now: What Works

ENGAGING YOUR PEOPLE RIGHT NOW: One June 18, 2020, I’m giving a virtual presentation for a human resource organization on employee engagement. (Go to BAHRA to register). With everything else on your plate as a leader, you may think that this is the last thing you need to worry about, but I don’t believe that’s true. Certainly, the economics of your organization, strategy and your own health and safety are important, but if you don’t have motivated and loyal employees to carry out those efforts, they will fail. While I’ve written before about managing through this crisis — Leading Through Crisis: Four New Rules; Crisis Management: What Works? Tight Rules or Loose Rules? — what’s important for engagement right now is listening to your employees and responding to their new feelings.

MOVING YOUR STAFF THROUGH GRIEF: While we may all be feeling afraid, sad, angry and so on now, we may be surprised to learn that we are also grieving. In a useful Harvard Business Review article recently, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief“, David Kessler, the world’s foremost expert on the grieving process, explained that most of us are grieving the loss of the lives we once lived. The kind of grieving we are experiencing, however, may feel different than the past. As he explains: “The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

Anticipatory Grief: Kessler argues that we are also experiencing “anticipatory grief”, the loss of control overand fear for the future. We may not know what the future holds, but we are increasingly sure it is going to be something negative, and we are focused on that. The problem, as humanities professor Dr. Mark Lilla, wrote in this Sunday’s New York Times is that we keep asking pundits what is going to happen, but no one knows what is going to happen so we should just stop asking: “At some level, people must be thinking that the more they learn about what is predetermined, the more control they will have. This is an illusion. Human beings want to feel that they are on a power walk into the future, when in fact we are always just tapping our canes on the pavement in the fog.”

What Should You Do?

1. LISTEN TO AND ACKNOWLEDGE FEELINGS: Understand that your people may be cycling through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance and ultimately, meaning. As anyone who’s gone through the stages of grieving knows, the process is not linear, people can go back and forth through the various stages. Encourage your staff to express what they are feeling – if they do so appropriately. Educate them about the grieving process. If they know what they are feeling and why, that helps.HELP THEM FIND MEANING: While the future is always uncertain, you can find meaning in the present, the next breath, the next project, doing the next right thing. Make sure that they know they are a part of the whole effort of the organization and that you notice and appreciate their contribution.

   CALL THE EXPERTS: Encourage your people to reach out to employee assistance programs or other mental health professionals. Make sure that they understand that you encourage that kind of support and that they will not be judged for doing so. Bring in – remotely or otherwise – change management experts to help with what’s ahead.