Avoid Making These 3 Engagement Mistakes

If your organization has a diverse set of departments, or is spread across multiple locations, you likely experience challenges in collective engagement.

Each group might operate in silos, focusing on their own goals instead of organizational objectives.

There may be a lack of clear communication channels or consistent communication methods across groups, making some groups hard to reach.

Some employees might not have access to conventional tools, or be dispersed throughout a wide territory.

There may even be cultural or language barriers that exist.

No matter the reason, the outcome is not ideal.

In this issue, we’d like to highlight three mistakes we often see made in organizations with diverse populations that are killing their engagement.

At Propel, we see this problem routinely. In fact, it’s one of the main pain points that causes our clients to seek out our help.

We work with a number of government clients that have employees doing every type of job imaginable, utilities companies with a combination of field and desk workers, automotive companies with union and non-union members, multi-national organizations with employees in multiple regions, and more.

In fact, if you’re a public sector organization, you may want to check out our new
Public Sector Playbook for Employee Well-being - it’s full of the strategies we have used over the past two decades to motivate an engage public sector organizations.

Download it for free here.

Conventional advice says to create a multitude of avenues by which to engage and receive communication, but we have found this to actually reduce engagement.

Here are three reasons why you might be failing to engage your employees.

Employees are thought of as a single body.

When we assume employees are all equal, we overlook boundaries that exist.

Unfortunately, boundaries don’t go away because we fail to recognize them.

It’s easy to assume that, because a person works for your organization, they are emotionally connected to your values and mission.

While this is true to some level, there are likely other values in the mix that aren’t accounted for. This leads to employees that don’t respond well to your global communication.

For example, you may be a municipal government employer that is promoting your well-being program. You may insist that employees should join the program to “move more”.

This overlooks the employees in the parks department that are on their feet moving all day and they will likely fail to respond to this reason for action.

Treating all employees the same will result in low engagement.

Employees are thought of as solely members of their respective department or region.

On the other end of the spectrum, we cannot view our employees exclusively through the lens of their department or region.

If we do this, we have lost the connection we have to them.

The main influence we have in their lives is as their employer. If we communicate and interact with them as if they belonged to another organization, we risk becoming irrelevant.

We also reaffirm the silos that exist, strengthening the barrier, and limit the reach our global program will have.

We often see this take place in the form of hyper-localized programming that ignores global programming. For example, in an organization with five regions, each has its own well-being programming, its own set of tools and vendors, and its own messaging.

This approach fragments our organization to the point where the cohesiveness that an employee well-being program is meant to establish has been lost.

A shotgun approach to communication is taken.

When communicating a well-being program, communication across several channels is necessary to achieve greater recognition and participation. However, when a shotgun approach to communication is taken, communication is overloaded and highly irrelevant.

Organizations push out messaging through multiple channels without intentionally considering the effectiveness, timing, and reception of the messaging.

The focus is placed on the quantity of communication methods, not the quality.

It’s easy to assume this must be done, especially if you have diverse departments or regions.

“Employees need to receive the messaging via email, but some people like getting a physical letter.... we should also post about it on our slack channel and put up a flyer in the lunchroom.”

These aren’t necessarily bad things (we do encourage a multi-channel approach to program marketing) but they are rarely thought out.

For example, a field employee may favor text messages or emails, while office staff might respond better to posters, digital signage or intranet posts. Instead of giving them what they prefer, you inundate them with all possible communication channels.

Realistically, you have a short amount of time to demonstrate relevance to employees before they tune you out.

(We all do this, by the way - if you have made it this far, you have decided this post is relevant for you!)

If you waste your first few impressions on communications that will be lost on the recipient, you’re losing engagement.

At Propel, we work with our clients to establish a global identity for their well-being program, then follow up with localized programming and communication.

Implications for the well-being administrator:

• Refusing to recognize boundaries and differences within your organization will result in low engagement

• Viewing employees solely by department or region reinforces silos and hinders organizational cohesion, causing fragmented communication and programming.

• A shotgun communication approach, focusing on quantity over quality, overwhelms employees, resulting in disengagement.

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We’re committed to discussing challenges common to well-being leaders and presenting practical solutions that increase the wisdom of all well-being professionals.