What is employee engagement? The Conference Board defines it as “a heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for their job, organization, manager, or coworkers that in turn influences them to apply discretionary effort to their work.”

Here is a list of drivers of engagement that was included in my recent leadership training course:
• Trust and integrity
• Nature of the job
• Line of sight between individual contribution and company or team performance
• Career growth opportunities
• Pride about the organization
• Co-workers and team members
• Employee development
• Personal relationship with own manager.

How many drivers do you see in your own job? How many would your employees see?

I once read that the three main drivers of employee engagement were:
1. To be provided opportunities to feed news upwards;
2. Feeling well informed about what is happening in your organization; and
3. The belief that your manager is committed to your organization.

It all seems easy enough, right? Make your employees feel valued and appreciated and they will be engaged. If it was that easy you would wonder why there are so many books and programs developed to address this very topic.

Here is a little quiz you can take to determine what employees want from their jobs?

Rank each of  the following factors from 1 to 10. One being the highest ranking and 10 the lowest.
• Full Appreciation for Work Done
• Good Wages
• Good Working Conditions
• Interesting Work
• Job Security
• Promotional/Growth Opportunities
• Personal Loyalty to Workers
• Feeling “in” on things - feeling informed about the business
• Sympathetic Help on Personal Problems
• Tactful Disciplining

An interesting exercise might be to have your manager also do this quiz answering what factors she or he thinks are most important to you. This might lead to some interesting discussion.

This is an actual survey that was conducted with employees to see what they ranked the highest. I will provide the results of that survey in a couple of days. In the meantime, do the quiz and evaluate what you think is most important to you. Then in a couple of days you can measure yourself against the survey results.