In August, our Employee Engagement Briefings highlighted 50 employee engagement-related articles. Here is a recap of the Spotlight Articles of August 2017.

 

 

Small Talk Is an Overrated Way to Build Relationships with Your Employees

Harvard Business Review: “The relationships that you form with each of your direct reports are central to your ability to fulfill your three core responsibilities as a manager: Create a culture of feedback, build a cohesive team, and achieve results collaboratively. But these relationships do not follow the rules of other relationships in our lives; they require a careful balancing act. You need to care personally, without getting creepily personal or trying to be a “popular leader.” You need to challenge people directly and tell them when their work isn’t good enough, without being a jerk or creating a vicious cycle of discouragement and failure. That’s a hard thing to do.”

 

 

Simple, Rewarding Employee Experiences for Heightened Enterprise Profitability: An Introduction to Design Thinking in HR

CakeHR: “From the purpose and effectiveness of Design Thinking in HR to how businesses can go about embracing this concept, here’s an in-depth look at the revolution that is prioritizing human experiences for business profitability.”

 

 

How to Make Work More Meaningful for Your Team

Harvard Business Review: “Over the past few decades, a great deal of research has shown that leaders play a significant role in helping employees understand why their roles matter. Furthermore, the leadership characteristics that enable these cultures of meaning and purpose to engage employees are a reflection of a leader’s personality — which has been proven to have a strong impact on team and organizational performance. In particular, research suggests that there are four key personality characteristics that determine leaders’ ability to make other people’s jobs more meaningful.”

 

 

The quitting economy

Aeon: “The CEO of Me, Inc is a job-quitter for a good reason – the business world has come to agree with Friedric Hayek that market value is the best measure of value.” “In significant ways, the calculus of quitting changes workplace dynamics. Being a good manager now means helping those whom you manage acquire the skills that will help them to leave for a better job at another company.”

 

 

Want To Improve Employee Engagement? Start With Conscious Leadership

Forbes: “Conscious leadership is about awareness, being aware of how your own motivations and behaviors inspire and engage others — or not — and using these insights to more effectively sustain the growth and development of your organization and the people who comprise it. But more important than what conscious leadership is, is why it is essential to exhibit now.”

 

 

 

Fellow Agents, what are your thoughts on this month’s must-read intelligence? What must-reads would you suggest?

 

Let’s Engage! 

I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

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P.S.  First contact? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement community. Explore and join fellow employee engagement operatives in targeting a known thief – alias: Disengagement. Together we can bring this thief to justice and make the world a better place for all companies and their employees.

Other recent Agent in Engagement data/reports by Agent Gregory F Simpson: