Steal From These Firms’ Playbooks for an Engaged Workforce

Do your colleagues arrive at the office after the weekend exclaiming, “Thank God it’s Monday!”

Or do they grumble each week with clockwork precision about how the weekend was once again too darn short?

What’s the secret sauce that differentiates those employers where people actually look forward to coming to work, versus the places where employees show up simply to collect a paycheck — and grudgingly, at that?

Research from the Hay Group, which publishes the annual “World’s Most Admired Companies” list, offers a few pointers gleaned from practices common to the best-scoring companies. Bosses: take notes. People who have to take orders: take notes, then send your applications to the companies like Apple, Google, Southwest Airlines and lesser-known firms that go through these steps to make employees happy.

This article in Talent Management magazine gives some high-level bullet points on how those dreamy-to-work-for companies manage to get their workforces engaged and delivering top performance through good economic times as well as tough ones.

A few of the keys Hay Group identified:

• Involving employees at all levels when it comes to change, especially for promoting efficiency and innovation
• Taking work/life balance seriously to avoid burnout of top talent
• Helping employees keep their skills current with ongoing training opportunities.

You can also check out this video I made that explains some simple, but all-too-little-practiced elements of cultivating an engaged workforce: