Ignoring Your High Performing and Engaged Employees: Don’t Get Caught Making This Mistake

We are hard wired to focus on threats, things that might put us in danger and things that are wrong.  Unfortunately, that wiring does us a disservice is some situations because it pulls away our focus from what’s right.  Research shows that when we focus and build on what’s right we experience more success and happiness.

When it comes to employee engagement, our instincts tell us to  figure out why are some of our employees are  so disengaged.  Rather, a better question to ask is what is going right with our engaged employees and how can that be replicated in other areas of the organization?  Why?  Here are a few of the characteristics of engaged employees:

• Consistently high performing
• Have high organizational citizenship (acting for the benefit of the organization)
• Can handle higher workloads with less likelihood of burnout
• More efficient and productive
• More innovative and creative
• Have a high connection with the mission
• Work with more passion

Important characteristics for employees to have?  I’d say so. Accordingly, organizations need to figure out how to keep engaged employees engaged in order to retain them as well as increase the engagement of other employees.  If we were to follow our instincts and focus on what’s wrong (our disengaged employees) it likely would be at the expense of our engaged employees – the ones we need to pay attention to the most.

Unfortunately, a common mistake that organizations make in addressing employee engagement is ignoring engaged employees because they’re already such high performers.  We assume their needs are being met so we don’t need to invest as much time in them as we invest in our “problems.”  In fact, the opposite is true.  Ignore your engaged employees and they will leave eventually.  Focus on your engaged employees and they will stay and help build an environment where it is easier for others to become engaged as well.  Why does that matter?  The more engaged employees, the better overall profitability of your organization, higher customer satisfaction, greater efficiency and productivity, and lower employee turnover to name a few good reasons.

To learn more about how to build employee engagement in your organization, contact us and let our experts help you.