How to Hold a Team Employee Engagement Conversation

 

Wondering how to hold a team employee engagement conversation? You have come to the right place!

Employee engagement is critical to the success of any business. Without engaged employees, you will never be able to meet your full potential.  You will be mediocre at best.  Study after study has shown that an engaged workforce helps reduce costs, reduces risks, and increases revenue. Yet, so few leaders focus on employee engagement and understand when and how to have employee engagement related conversations with their teams.  In this post, we will show you what to look for, know when to have a conversation, and how to have the conversation.  We will also take a look at what you should do after the fact and how to ensure that your team feels heard, supported, and ultimately more engaged.

When Should I Have Employee Engagement Conversations?

In short, all of the time.   Employee engagement conversations should happen as frequently as other meetings such as operations and sales meetings. Why is that so?  Well, who brings the objectives from those operation and sales meetings to life?   Employees.   And engaged employees can bring those objectives to life much more efficiently and successfully than disengaged employees.

Just reflect back on your own career. When were you the most successful?  It was also likely a time that you were the most engaged.  Conversely, think about a time when you were the least successful and productive. You were likely disengaged at some level.

By focusing on deepening your employee’s engagement, you are setting them up to work at their peak potential, thereby expediting any goals that you may have.

For example… the company that I work for did heroic things during the global pandemic to help serve our customers.  What would ordinarily take months (if not years) to do was accomplished in a matter of days.  If we had disengaged employees, that would not have been possible.

If employee engagement enables success, it should go without saying that these conversations should take place much more frequently.  A good rule of thumb is to have some type of team employee engagement related conversations at least 1-2 times per month.

How Should I Have Team Employee Engagement Conversations?

So how do we go about having team employee engagement related conversations?  It’s actually easier than you think and doesn’t take too much effort.  Follow these easy steps to hold an effective engagement conversation with your team.

1. Review the Data

The first step in having an employee engagement discussion with your team begins before the actual conversation. First, take some time to review any employee engagement related data or insights that you may have available. This could include employee surveys or employee comments. When reviewing the data, look for trends and for outliers. What are you doing well? What could be improved?   Review the quantitative and any qualitative data to get a holistic picture of what is going on.  It’s also helpful to review notes from any past employee engagement discussions. Any insights help you gain a clearer picture of where your team may be in terms of engagement.

2. Schedule the Meeting

Next, let your team member know that you plan on discussing employee engagement with them and schedule the time to do so. Ask them if there is anything that they would like to discuss or make sure is covered.   Ask if they have any preference for when and how the conversation is facilitated.  Your goal is to make sure that your team feels comfortable and secure in having the conversations.

When scheduling the meeting you should make sure that you have plenty of time. Scheduling an employee engagement discussion for fifteen minutes at the end of a sales meeting doesn’t necessarily scream that you are committed to employee engagement. If you are able, schedule the meeting for 1 hour or 1 1/2 hours.   It’s better to have more time than less.   On the flip side, anything more than 1 1/2 hours may be too much.  Sometimes these conversations can be emotional so too much time can be exhaustive. If you need more time, schedule a follow up.

3. Set the Stage

Before the conversation, share a list of questions or topics that you would like to discuss with the team.  This will help the employee prepare and gather their thoughts.  It will also allow them to provide feedback if there is something additional that needs to be addressed.

Before the meeting make sure that you ensure that the conversation will be a safe and confidential discussion.  Assure them that you are committed to improving engagement and look forward to hearing their feedback and working together to identify ways to help improve team engagement. Don’t assume that your employees know this. It’s important that managers continue to declare their commitment to help the employees feel safe and heard.

4. Hold the Discussion

Now it’s time to hold the conversation.  Your role should be to facilitate and guide the employees through the discussion using the prepared list of questions.  As a facilitator, you should only be doing 10-20% of the talking. Your employee should be doing the most sharing.  Try to keep the conversation upbeat but be empathetic to employee’s concerns and emotions.

Whatever you do, don’t take feedback personally and get defensive. This will cause the employee to shut down and avoid sharing. An employee sharing feedback cares enough to do so. Disengaged employees don’t care enough to share feedback. So as much as it can be difficult to hear feedback, it’s actually a gift.  If you find yourself getting emotional, take a quick break and compose yourself.

5. Determine Your Goal & Action Items

Hopefully, the conversation with your team led to some clear goals and actions that could be taken to help improve engagement.

With your employees, decide what your goal should be. It’s helpful to be very specific with what you want to cause. Employee engagement has many components so trying to do too much can lead to ineffectiveness. Be as detailed as possible with what you want to tackle.   For example “We would like to ensure that the team members feel supported in their professional growth” or “we will work to cut down on unnecessary processes to help improve productivity”.

Now that you know what you want to accomplish, work with the the team to identify 2-3 steps to help you get there. Use the SMART framework to help you identify actions for you and the team members to complete.

After the meeting, send a summary to the team member and, if applicable, document the action plan. If possible, keep the action plan in a location that is easily accessible to everyone. This will help keep the action plan top of mind and hold everyone accountable to what was committed to.

6. Schedule Next Meeting

Immediately after meeting with the team, schedule the next engagement meeting. The worst thing that you can do is to have one singular engagement related conversation.  Engagement is ever-evolving and something that should be discussed often.

Scheduling the next meeting right away will help hold yourself accountable and indicate to your employees that you are truly committed to putting in the work to help them achieve deeper engagement.

There you have it. Just follow these six easy steps to have team employee engagement conversations and you are well on your way.  After all, employee engagement is not rocket science, it’s as simple as intentionally listening to your employees, working hard to enable their success, and treating them like you would want to be treated.

What tips do you have for having a team employee engagement conversation? Have you ever had a disastrous engagement conversation? Leave a comment below!

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