Links of the Week is a selection of articles and blog posts about #EmployeeEngagement, #Millennials, and #Leadership that were the most popular on my Twitter feed this week. I’ve added some personal thoughts and opinions to the links below as well. Enjoy!

#1

How Does Employee Engagement Impact On Your Brand Reputation? (Business 2 Community)

A recent paper by Baylor University reports that highly engaged employees (i.e. those allowed to go to the toilet when they need to) are 87% less likely to leave their companies than their unengaged counterparts (i.e. those told to hold it in).

You have to read the article to get the joke but the lesson is quite clear: Employee Engagement is important. Having almost 9 out of 10 people on your team thinking about their next job is not a sustainable way to run a business. Not to mention, once an employee leaves your company what would they be saying about your business?

I’ve had friends ask me about organizations that I’ve worked for and I’ve either recommended their services or products wholeheartedly and provided them with my frank experiences (both good and bad). Your employees – past and present – are also your brand ambassadors. Making sure they feel empowered and engaged is key to your business’s long-term success.

#2

When It Comes to True Employee Engagement, No Pain Equals No Gain (Entrepreneur)

In employee surveys, I often ask short, but thought-provoking, questions like: If you owned the company what is the first thing you would change?

The three takeaways:

1. Listen to the good, but listen intently to the bad.

2. Peel back layers with intriguing questions (like the one above)

3. Pan for gold in engagement data.

All helpful takeaways and goes to show that created an engaged culture takes a lot of attention and care.

#3

10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company (Forbes)

Engagement, as measured by employee surveys, does not cause success. Engagement is, at best, a symptom of success. Employees who are succeeding and feeling good about their contributions to your company are naturally more likely to:

Be proud to work for your company

Be happy to come to work each day

Feel valued

Great piece reframing the Employee Engagement dilemma. The author’s argument is that setting up employees to be successful at their jobs and helping them understand WHY their work contributes to the organizational success is the key. It’s not the surveys, the pizza parties, or undeserved promotions. I agree with this. I believe David Zinger’s definition of engagement (I’m paraphrasing here) “good people coming together to do great work” is what we need to focus more on. If you help employees feel like they have the tools they need to make an impact and the company performs at a high level (e.g. more profits, more satisfied customers, or more societal impact) then Employee Engagement will follow.

#4

Most employee engagement initiatives failing (benefitspro)

While more than 90 percent of employers said that method of communication with workers was an important contributor to employee engagement, many said that their company wasn’t communicating in a way that reaches digitally-dependent millennials in the workplace. Only 16 percent said that they’re making regular use of mobile apps.

I think this is the main issue today. Companies just don’t know how to communicate with the younger generation coming in and are woeful at incorporating mobile into their engagement strategy. Yes, more training courses and tuition reimbursement is nice but if you’re not communicating with your employees on a regular basis, you’re going to lose this engagement battle.

 

#5

The 10 best Chrome extensions to install right now (AppSumo)

Ever bought something online, seen a coupon field, and quickly turned to Google to find a coupon that hasn’t expired? Honey does that for you automatically. It instantly adds the best, valid, coupon during checkout saving you tons of moolah.

Aside from Evernote Web Clipper and Momentum (which I use everyday) the one that caught my eye was Honey. As a moderate online shopper, this could really be a useful tool to track down the best deals online.

 

Some great articles this week. Thank you to those that liked, re-tweeted, or commented on the posts. Looking forward to next week’s roundup!