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Tag: Meaningful Workplace

How to Grow and Maximize Employee Engagement

Posted on by Sarah Herold

Employee Engagement Is More Than an HR Benefit

Since Gallup began tracking employee engagement in 2000, employee engagement averages haven’t budged. A recent Gallup survey shows that indeed, work could be more fulfilling for most Americans. The percentage of U.S. workers whom Gallup considers “engaged” in their jobs averaged 34.1% in March.

As it stands today, over two-thirds of the American workforce is disengaged at work, and it appears that no amount of HR benefit, wellness programs, or incentives can make a dent in this number.

So how does an organization build a culture of happy, engaged employees?

Instead of searching for the right engagement survey or the right communication tool, an organization must instead focus on making the work itself deeply meaningful to each employee.

An organization must talk less about engagement, and focus more on purpose.

You might be wondering, “How can a for-profit organization offer meaningful work without a cause?” Let me illustrate by using myself as an example:

I feel the greatest sense of purpose when I am able to understand the needs of individuals and design solutions and services for them. I’m not changing the world or disrupting an industry. Even the people who are need something to ground them day-to-day. For me, addressing the needs of people is at the heart of productive, successful work. I thrive when I can generate harmony and progress for everyone.

My job as an account strategist allows me to use these very skills that give me the most satisfaction – empathy, intuition, and perception. I like going to work every day because I’m doing something that’s inherently meaningful to me – establishing personal connections and seeing my efforts come to fruition.

According to Gallup, employees who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged than those who do not.

When we know what motivates us we can then organize our assignments to excite, energize, and fulfill us every day. What could each of us start doing today to create a better sense of purpose and meaning in our day-to-day work?

Foster Relationships

Purpose comes down to relationships. Strong connections with customers or colleagues give us fulfillment in our work. Even if we are doing the most amazing work, we won’t feel fulfilled at the end of the day if we don’t feel a strong connection to people.

Personal Growth

When we stretch ourselves beyond whom we think we are and what we think we are capable of, we feel tremendous satisfaction and purpose. It’s important to seek out opportunities to learn and grow.

It’s the Little Things that Count

What matters are the little things we do every day. When we make a difference for someone else – open a door of opportunity, make something easier, or even elicit a smile – it is incredibly gratifying.

When an organization builds their culture and talent strategy around purpose, employee engagement rises. People are motivated, have greater tenure, and are more likely to promote their company as a good place to work. They’ll show up to work differently. They build meaningful relationships. They work to be challenged and grow professionally. And they work to bring out the best in everyone around them.

An engaged workforce positions your business to grow and sets your brand apart as meaningful. It’s a win-win-win.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

How to Help Your Startup Thrive Internally

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Finding for the right strategies to help your startup thrive

It’s an all too familiar startup sight. Your technical co-founder and engineering teams have their eyes glued to screens of scrolling code as their fingers fly across keyboards and music blasts through their earbuds. They are driving hard toward the launch date or new product release, losing themselves in their work and consuming Red Bull like there’s no tomorrow.

Nikos Moraitakis, Founder & CEO of WorkableHR.com, sets the following as one of ten helpful tasks non-technical co-founders should undertake:

“Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated. Your technical co-founder may spend long stretches of time focused on some particular technical detail or problem. This focus is good from a development standpoint, but takes his mind off the big picture for a while. You need to engage him, and let him participate in the intellectual conversation about what it is we’re building as a whole – not burden him with the work of execution on “everything else”, but enriching his big picture with knowledge and contemplation about it. There is a joyful and highly motivating emotion that comes from the sense that your vision is coming all together, customer development is progressing, investors are interested, numbers can be achieved, feedback is positive, market is missing what you’re building, etc.”

We agree wholeheartedly. A time out from the day-to-day pressures can remind hardworking team members of why they are doing what they do, renew their energies around doing the work needed to complete the product, and focus their attention on creating a quality product.

Toward a product that matters.

At the same time, as a non-technical partner, you need not only the energy and endurance of your technical co-founder and team, but also the ability to keep them focused in ways that push them to create a product that matters right out of the gate.

That is, a product that not only works, but helps people lead better lives in some way (e.g. more productive, healthier, more enriching, etc.).

Mattering is the great differentiator today. People who are looking to create more meaning in their lives are being more discerning about the products they buy, whom they buy from, and the places they work. When you strike a chord of meaning, your product and business earns the admiration, respect, and support of people looking to do things that matter.

Three ideas to change the conversation

1.  Going beyond the vision.

Just as the dev team is knee-deep in coding, you are busy keeping on top of everything else that is needed to ensure a successful launch.

Most think the driving force of a startup is its vision. However, many startup “visions” are technology-centric, emotionally neutral, and lacking in meaning. They tend to be very internally focused and bereft of perspective. They are often generic in intent, written in corporate-speak, and hard to relate to on a human level.

So, step one in creating meaningfully refreshing conversations with startup dev teams is to go beyond your vision and to adopt a Purpose Beyond Profit. This is a statement that elevates your startup’s reason for being – its “why”- and the way it will matter to people both rationally and emotionally.

Going one step further, when using this statement as a platform, consider how your startup should make its employees, customers, and partners feel when they deal with your company and its product, your advertising and promotion, your website, your sales and investor presentations, your customer support team, etc.

2.  Now it’s time for a workplace conversation that matters.

With a solid Purpose Beyond Profit and a set of feelings to focus upon, you are able to construct a break for your dev team that brings these two factors to life.

Start by leading a conversation on what it means to matter in today’s world – the value of getting people (including themselves) to have specific feelings – and what all this means vis-à-vis the product you have in development. Then, follow up with whatever “good news” you can share about the market opportunity, the investor interest, the team’s progress, any feedback you’ve gotten, etc.

By letting your team feel the “joyful and highly motivating emotion” that comes from doing work that truly matters to themselves, to the company, and to the world, you help them deliver a product that matters right out of the gate. As Nikos put it, “Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated.”

3.  Matter inside and out.

Finally, use your new Purpose Beyond Profit and set of feelings to guide how you bring your product to investors, partners, and customers. Help people outside the firm see your product as one that comes from a company that aims to do well by doing good through an emotionally meaningful Purpose Beyond Profit. Strive to be a company that stands out not only for what its products do, but also for the way the company makes people feel. Be a company that people are proud to be associated with and support because it does stuff that truly matters.

Learn more on how to help your startup thrive by making your brand matter.

The Meaningful Workplace explains how this change effects the dynamic between businesses and employees.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency that works with high-growth startups.

The Future of Work Is More About Cooperation Than Collaboration

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Future of Work

What does the future of work look like? Successful businesses in the future will share a common characteristic: a cooperative approach to employee engagement, morale, and gratification.

Stowe Boyd is a super-smart researcher and someone we’ve followed for years. Stowe is also an author who focuses on the future of work. He believes the tectonic forces pushing business into an unclear and accelerating future.

Stowe has made the following observation:

“In the collaborative business, people affiliate with coworkers around shared business culture and an approved strategic plan to which they subordinate their personal aims.

 

“But in a cooperative business, people affiliate with coworkers around a shared business ethos, and each is pursuing their own personal aims to which they subordinate business strategy.”

An Important Distinction

The future is about more humanized business. That means workplaces in which employees can “pursue their own personal aims”. Guided by what Stowe calls a “business ethos,” the employees thrive. At the same time, they put themselves ahead of the “business strategy”.

This is not “business as usual”. But these are not “ordinary times”. We are living in a time when employees (being the humans they are) are seeking to create more meaning in their lives. In a business sense, this means creating meaning through how they spend their money (as customers) and how they invest their time (as workers).

A Human-Centric, Meaningful Workplace

For employees, meaning comes from doing work that matters (a meaningful business ethos), in a way that increases the feeling that their efforts are helping others (including both the business’s customers as well as their fellow employees). So, rather than subordinating the personal aims of employees, successful businesses promote a cooperative work style.

The result? Employees become more involved. As a result, they contribute more ideas. Also, they are more open with others. They help each other out. So every interaction with fellow employees – coupled with the power of the meaningful business ethos driving the team – fills the employee with a sense of purpose and meaning that is absent in a collaborative approach.

 

We have outlined how we see the future of work in a white paper “The Meaningful Workplace.” Download it and let us know what you think.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco Brand Strategy firm

How Great Leaders Accelerate Innovation Through Meaning

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Why the need to accelerate innovation?

“No company in the future will be in a position to succeed if it squanders the imagination of its employees.”

Professor Gary Hamel, co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) and the M-Prize: Innovating Innovation Challenge.

Hamel says innovation is one of the most important and difficult challenges facing business around the world.

At the same time, innovation is a vital capability for companies because it is the:

> only insurance against irrelevance
> only antidote to margin-crunching competition
> only way you can out-perform a dismal economy
> only way to build enduring customer loyalty

Yet, he says, “I don’t think there’s one company in a hundred that makes innovation the work of every single employee, every day.”

He identifies three reasons why organizations aren’t truly innovative from top to bottom:

  1. People throughout the organization (front-line employees, administrative assistants, people in the centers, tech support staff, people in the warehouse, etc.) have not been given training in how to be innovative.
  2. There is no facility for people with ideas to get the time off from their current responsibilities to develop their ideas. Nor is there any available “experimental capital” that could help them prototype their innovations.
  3. Employees don’t have a clear understanding of what is expected of them or what is in it for them.

We would add a fourth point to Professor Hamel’s list:

4. Employees don’t share a common goal or purpose that inspires innovative thinking.

What’s missing in most companies is a compelling Purpose Beyond Profit.

When a company’s employees all share a common goal, purpose, and ambition built around making the world a better place, the opportunities for innovation abound.

A Purpose Beyond Profit that is folded into your brand strategy focuses everyone on the meaningful outcomes of the work they do.

This desire to do good brings them closer to those who are impacted by the company. These insights prompt them to focus deeply on the hopes, needs, values, and aspirations of the people the company serves.

Valuable, relevant, and practical innovations come as employees extend empathy to others, draw on their personal desire to create meaningful outcomes, and benefit from the company’s training, time, and financial support and clear expectations.

A company with a strong purpose inspires, stimulates, and enables the innovation it needs to thrive in the 21st Century.

The benefits go beyond profit as well. Meaning-based innovation creates a Meaningful Workplace in which employees feel that what they do matters: to themselves, to others, and to society.

As Professor Hamel says, “When companies innovate, you find that not only does market value go up, customers are happier, and so on, but most of all, it changes the human spirit of work. We were born to create as human beings. We can’t help but to create. But we need the skills, the tools, the environment, and so on. When you give people permission, when you allow them to bring those states of energy to the fore, you also create an organization in which there’s an unbelievable amount of excitement. The bubble of human excitement is always there with people thinking and dreaming up new ideas.”

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Companies with a Culture of Health Outperform

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

A Culture of Health Can Fuel Your Business

At Emotive Brand, we understand first-hand that a culture of health leads to a high performing brand and business. As a result, we embed eating healthy, living an active and safe lifestyle, and proactively managing levels of stress and overall wellness into the way we do business. It’s who we are. And we know this impacts our workplace environment, our brand, and our business.

Why’s that? In the end, healthy, safe, energized people are more able to do their work. In fact, studies indicate that companies that focus on the well-being and safety of their employees yield greater value for their investors. So the stakes are high. Health is not a company benefit. The health of your employees has a high impact on performance, productivity and overall workplace happiness. And by fueling a culture of health, you can better position your brand and business to thrive.

Cultures of Health, Gaining Traction

More and more organizations are coming around to the importance of building a culture of health, and this focus is becoming increasingly crucial for recruiting talent, retaining employees, and making sure employees are equipped and ready to help your brand and business succeed. It’s no question that people’s workplace expectations have heightened. Now, more than ever, people want to work for companies who value their health, reinforce healthy lifestyle choices, and encourage and support their personal goals and objectives.

People are increasingly worried about high stress levels, unhealthy diets, inactive lifestyles, and are demanding more support, flexibility, and rewards for healthy living. As a result, many businesses are placing heightened attention to employee wellness programs and increased focus on improving employee health, reducing stress, and increasing happiness and meaning within the workplace.

A Culture of Athletes Demands Even More

Here at Emotive Brand we’d consider ourselves more than just a culture of health. With so many talented, dedicated, and inspiring athletes on our team, our culture of health must also be a culture tailored to athletes.

Everyone has experienced a busy day that lead to an unhealthy meal. Or a long stressful week that resulted in sleep-deprivation, making it nearly impossible to get out of bed for a workout in the morning. Work often gets in the way of exercise.

But imagine training for triathlons like our co-founder Bella Banbury, or scheduling long runs leading up to the SF marathon like senior designer Wayne Tang, or lengthy swims in the bay like Strategy Director Taylor Standlee. Many of our employees were college athletes and continue to compete in athletic events throughout the Bay Area and beyond. And these athletic performances are demanding. Which means we also need a culture of flexibility to make a culture of athletes work.

Helping a Culture of Athletes Thrive

Health and wellness means different things to different people. We might not be Olympians, but we are a culture of athletes. So how do we support our athletic culture at Emotive Brand and leverage it to help our brand and business thrive?

1. Encourage and reward all athletic endeavors:

In order to truly promote a culture of health, support and honor athletic endeavors of all kinds. Athletes never have the same goals. Even if a competitive swimmer is working to run his or her first 5k, it is worth celebrating. People who feel supported and encouraged are more likely to reach their goals – both personal and professional. Encouraging athletic endeavors means building a culture that supports people to overcome challenges, improve skills, and even learn new. It helps create an environment of high achieving, motivated, goal-orientated, coachable, and collaborative people who will help your brand thrive. So make note of these achievements at meetings, congratulate people in person, and celebrate big wins.

2. Translate athletic skills to work:

For us, there are so many parallels between athletics and brand strategy. And considering the connections between the two and working on translating our strengths from one to the others helps us be more on top of our game, more competitive, and more successful – in the office and outside it. A culture of athletes will reflect and show the brand’s drive, dedication, adaptability, and ability to work collaboratively. And when fostered, these characteristics fuel the energy of the brand, its communications, and even how it’s perceived externally.

3. Be flexible, adaptable, and support individual needs:

Like every brand needs a customized path to transformation, every athlete takes an individualized track to success. When supporting employee’s goals, it’s important to build a workplace that can be flexible and adaptable to each individual. Give each person the tools they need to thrive and in turn, help move your business forward. Employees who feel like their workplace cares about their personal needs, goals, and objectives are more likely to be more satisfied, work harder, and fuel your brand towards success.

Keep Your Brand in Mind

What your brand stands for has to align with how your brand behaves. For us, as a competitive, collaborative, dedicated, growth and goal orientated company, building and encouraging culture of athletes is important to the way we do business and live our brand. But every business requires different strengths, and every brand requires different behaviors to bring it to life. Think about how to build a culture that fosters specific brand behavior. And make sure these behaviors are in line with your purpose, goals, and objectives.

Every touch-point of your brand reflects your brand’s performance. So take this thinking further by applying it to every aspect of your business and every way your brand interacts with people – inside and outside the business. Promoting a culture of athletes, if it’s genuine and authentic, will set up your people to perform in a way that reinforces their natural interests and instincts. And by staying true to what you stand for, your brand be authentically positioned to thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

The Value of Leadership that Inspires

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Leadership Leads to Inspiration

The strength of a company depends heavily on its leaders and their leadership. Successful business leaders have to be smart, hardworking, and able to get things done. But, often, that’s simply not enough to fuel a thriving business. Today’s companies require more than just intelligence and drive. As a result, more and more companies are seeking out and focusing on developing their ability to drive inspiration and motivation. And in modern business, whether a leader can inspire, motivate, and engage employees is what sets one leader apart from the next.

Inspiration not only leads to more engaged employees, but it consistently leads to increased innovation and business achievement. A company that can cultivate the skills that will inspire, motivate, and engage employees across the organization will gain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. Why? Because motivated employees make things happen.

New Requirements for Leaders

Recent changes in the business world have reshaped the workplace, and therefore reshaped what’s required of leaders. Here are three key shifts that are happening today:

1. Focus on the customer experience

The move from product to customer experience is a major source of competitive advantage for businesses today. While companies will always need to deliver high value goods or services, high customer experience has become just as essential. Thus, customer-facing employees have tremendous influence on the success and future of a business. If employees feel inspired and engaged, they will then amaze and inspire customers.

2. Increased independence

This concerns the nature of the work itself. Today, increasingly more jobs rely on collaboration and independence. It’s become common in the workplace for people to collaborate across departments, do their work remotely, and manage themselves. People are expected to generate their own ideas, and take responsibility more than ever before. Being able to stay motivated and creative, especially with little supervision, requires both dedication to your team and passion for your job.

3. More millennials means = demand for meaning

We can’t forget the millennial generation. While the ways in which we work, and the work itself, have both changed, so have today’s youngest employees. Millennials’ value proposition is not related to traditional motivators. The millennial generation will work hard for a company if they believe in its values and purpose, not necessarily for a larger salary or better title. So creating inspiring and meaningful workplace for this generation is critical to attracting and retaining today’s top talent.

How do you motivate employees in an organization when the classic carrot and stick approach will no longer work?

In order to inspire and engage, leaders must energize those around them and create a climate of trust. Their leadership must extend beyond just their own team and be linked with a company’s strategy and overall workplace culture. While there is no “right” way or one way to be inspirational, these types of leaders tend to have courage and lead with authenticity. They utilize empathy and empowerment. And their leadership style flexes and adapts depending upon what’s required of them in the workplace.

To be a next generation leader, these are the key leadership skills to develop and practice:

1. Individualistic

Leadership is not a one size fits all. It takes time to learn and cultivate the abilities, strengths, and motivators of each person. Each person has their own style, motivations, and way of thinking. When you focus on the differences between individuals, you change from trying to build the “perfect” team to building a “great” team — one that will be more productive and engaged.

2. Focus on strengths

Cultivating someone’s inherent talents leaves people feeling authentic, valuable, and empowered. An inspirational leader has a good sense of his or her own self, and therefore, sets a good example by developing their own strengths and offsetting their own weaknesses. When people work in strengths-based environments, creativity and productivity increase. Everyone feels like they can do what they do best.

3. Self-aware

Having a sense of mindfulness promotes better overall health and workplace satisfaction. Being self-aware is the essence of leadership itself – being able to stay calm under pressure, cope with stress, and empathize with others. A leader must be able to reflect on their actions and revise as needed. Remaining open to new ways of thinking and interaction creates a required sense of trust and connection to other people.

4. Optimistic

Remaining resilient and positive in the midst of challenges demonstrates a sense of confidence and level-headedness. Leaders who are optimistic don’t just have a goal in mind, they have a strategy to achieve it, and the motivation to implement their plan. Optimistic leaders are able to inspire people to believe that the future will be better than the present. And furthermore, that they have the power to make it so.

5. Visionary

Orienting people toward an aspirational future creates individual purpose and joy. When people feel relevant, they are more likely to participate and contribute. Proactively developing a culture of “you are part of something larger than yourself” creates a common platform for everyone to make unique contributions towards.

Lead the Employee Experience

In order to deliver a great customer experience, you must deliver a great employee experience. And understanding that employees are looking for more than just a paycheck and a “job well done” is the first step in becoming a successful 21st century leader.

In today’s workplace, the opportunity to be a leader is open to anyone who develops their inspirational skills and combines them with their own unique strengths, enthusiasm for the job, and authenticity. Valuing inspiration throughout an organization teaches everyone to be more aware, reflective, and empathetic. Ultimately, a team that reinforces the core principles of inspiration will have a competitive edge, and a more productive and resilient future.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

 

Meaningful Workplace: Forge a Meaningful Employee Alliance

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Last in our Meaningful Workplace Series: Forge a Meaningful Employee Alliance 

“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi

The focus in the development of a Meaningful Workplace really needs be on self-discovery and self-identification. It’s about helping employees to be aware of, to identify with, and to connect to the ambitions, feelings, and behaviors the business seeks in its workplace.

The efforts to build a Meaningful Workplace must not result in dictates, mandates, or rulebooks. There is no need to appoint “meaning police” to monitor employees and hand out tickets. There are no trainers, only mentors. There are no short-lived campaigns, but rather a constant undertow of meaningful actions.

Becoming self-replicating and emotionally connected

The goal is to become a self-propagating Meaningful Workplace.

A workplace in which employees embrace the ambition and align their efforts to it. A workplace to which employees feel emotionally connected. A workplace in which employees enjoy making their coworkers feel the same emotional bond. A workplace in which the attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics of employees create a truly meaningful culture. A workplace in which meaning simply replicates itself every time an employee comes in contact with the business, a coworker, or someone in the outside world.

Summary

Armed with engaged and motivated employees, housed in a Meaningful Workplace, a business becomes a powerful force against what Gary Hamel calls, “the threats of accelerating change, hyper-competition, and commoditized knowledge.”

The Meaningful Workplace is the workplace of the future. Its clearly stated ambition serves as a beacon to everyone in the workplace. The way it leaves employees feeling makes them eager to participate, collaborate, and create. The behavior of the employees creates a meaningful culture that serves as a magnet to prospective recruits, customers, partners, suppliers, investors, communities, and influencers.

By forging a meaningful alliance with the employees – by establishing, managing, and nurturing a Meaningful Workplace – businesses can become better fit for the future.

 

Did you miss the first eight parts of this series? You might want to read:

This series is excerpted from a white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace that was first published at Emotive Brand.

Meaningful Workplace: Master Plans Create Employee Alliance

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Creating employee alliance

Seventh in a series.

A Meaningful Workplace is built from the company’s master plan – a strategic platform used exclusively by senior management – that defines the three core elements of ambition (purpose), feelings (values), and behavior (building a culture).

This master plan drives all subsequent activities, which include:

  • Macro Plans – how the business itself will be evolved;
  • Group Plans – how groups of employees will be engaged;
  • Solo Plans – how individual employees will be personally engaged.

Building something great and enduring

Macro Planning puts the business’s structure, policies, and procedures through the filter of the master plan to identify opportunities to better align the work experience to the agreed ambition, feelings, and behavior.

Group Planning develops tailored interactions between the company and groups of its employees (e.g. by location, discipline, seniority, etc.) that engage employees in the principles and practices of the master plan (note: not the master plan itself).

Solo Planning creates the means by which individuals come to personally identify with and internalize the principles and practices of the master plan (note: not the master plan itself).

When senior management has a Master Plan, they not only achieve their traditional objectives, but also something of great and enduring value: a new, higher-order and meaningful alliance with their employees.

Did you miss the first six parts of this series? You might want to read:

This series is excerpted from a white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace that was first published at Emotive Brand.

Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Sixth in a series on workplace culture

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein

A business’ fate is determined in large part by its culture. A business culture is the reality created by how people act, react, and interact with each other based on their attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions.

The most damaging business cultures are those in which aggression, neglect, and punishment leave employees feeling they have no reason to commit their energies and skills, share their ideas, or help the company advance.

Wanted: a culture that unites and connects employees

A culture built principally around rewards for individual or group performance pits individuals and teams against each other, often in ways that create class systems, in-fighting, and divisive loyalties. The winners in such cultures find meaning in their rewards. The rest are left wondering what the point is for them and their employer.

A passive, benign, and inert business culture leaves the business subject to the aggregate confusion that results when each individual employee’s quirks, tendencies, and potentially questionable morality and ethics are accommodated.

The most beneficial business cultures are those that unite employees around an ambition, make them feel emotionally connected, and surround them with people who share their ambition, feelings, and behavior.

4 factors in transforming your workplace culture

By consistently and intentionally conveying a meaningful ambition and evoking a set of unique and positive emotions, businesses can transform the meaningful outcome of every aspect of the work experience:

  1. The physical environment – the aesthetics and functionality of the workplace;
  2. The policies and procedures – the actual rules of the company as well as the way in which employees experience them;
  3. The attitudes and behavior of fellow employees – the feelings evoked when dealing with superiors, peers, and reports;
  4. The moment of contact – the nature of company/employee and employee/outside world interactions.

A Meaningful Workplace culture is based on the way employees experience these factors – what meaning is conveyed and how they are left feeling.

Did you miss the first five parts of this series?

Read Being Meaningful: It’s the Key to Better Engaging Your Employees, Getting Employees to Respond Positively, Why Workplaces Aren’t Meaningful Now, The Meaningful Workplace: It Takes New Ways of Thinking, and Acting, and Using Values to Build Engagement and a Meaningful Workplace.

This series is excerpted from a white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace that was first published at Emotive Brand.

Using Values to Build Engagement and a Meaningful Workplace

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Fifth in a series.

“People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

The goal of employee engagement is to drive employee attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics in such a way as to improve their productivity, morale, satisfaction, and usefulness within the organization. However, many companies have struggled with converting their proclaimed values into compelling, work-changing experiences for their employees.

Often, the problems have been that the values are typically expressed with meaning-neutral (if not meaningless) corporate-speak, or that the values aren’t of a first-order nature. That is, they don’t touch on what truly constitutes the “good” for people inside and outside the organization.

Getting employees to live company values

As such, employees simply haven’t been able to internalize the values. If asked, they may be able to repeat the values verbatim, but their recitation will not be heartfelt. Furthermore, too often their conscious knowledge of the values does not lead to the desired changes in attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics.

There is a way businesses can get employees to live the company’s values. Ironically, it is by never using the word “values.” Rather, it is by bringing people to the company’s values through feelings.

This is a new way of engaging employees in corporate values. It doesn’t ask employees to buy into potentially bland statements crafted in corporate-speak. Instead, it prompts employees to think about how they want themselves, and others, to be left feeling by the business.

To make this work, the business determines a set of higher-order feelings based on their ambition. These feelings are selected based on their ability to help propel employees in their pursuit of the ambition and their ability to serve as an employee-friendly way of deploying values through employee engagement initiatives.

Engagement built around feelings

The business then engages its employees around these feelings, using them to shape, change, improve, and make more consistent, the employee’s attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics as it drives them forward toward the ambition.

For example, employees can be engaged in a process by which they explore how the business can better make them feel the selected feelings through changes and additions to the company policies and procedures.

At the same time, employees can affect change within by questioning how they, and the policies and procedures they control, can be changed or added to in order to make their superiors, peers, and reports more likely to feel the desired feelings.

By focusing on feelings rather than traditional value statements, a business instantly forges a fresh and new emotional connection with its employees. By using feelings as the platform by which it instills its values, businesses discover a better way to engage their employees and to get them to internalize both the business’ ambition (purpose) and its feelings (values).

Did you miss the first four parts of this series?

Read Being Meaningful: It’s the Key to Better Engaging Your Employees, Getting Employees to Respond Positively, Why Workplaces Aren’t Meaningful Now, and The Meaningful Workplace: It Takes New Ways of Thinking, and Acting.

This series is excerpted from a white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace that was first published at Emotive Brand.