E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

How to Use Employee Engagement to Boost Your Business

Curating good, relevant content that matters to you is just such a wonderful thing! Over the last couple of years there have been a good number of really insightful, and very helpful, blog posts that have caught my attention on what, to me, is still one of the most important topics within the corporate environment and perhaps well beyond as well, without not necessarily even being related to social networking alone per se: Employee Engagement. Most of those articles have always been very positive, over the course of time, in identifying how critical and paramount it surely is to help drive new business and to delight your clients to the extreme, but also to increase that sense of belonging, of unmeasurable loyalty, or everlasting generosity of going the extra mile without expecting anything in return, of driving the whole concept of co-creation as part of that co-sharing of responsibility, of feeling good, etc. etc. Some others haven’t. The reality is though that, in my opinion, and thanks to the extensive use of social software tools, amongst several other things, we are now seeing both inside and outside of the firewall, employee engagement *does* exist and, as such, every business, every organisation, needs to start figuring out a way to resurface it, to both embrace it and promote it heavily, if they haven’t done so already, as it walks both ways, i.e. from top down, to bottom up, before they realise, the hard way, and acknowledge, they are employing autobots and not truly passionate, dedicated, engaged, motivated, committed, professional knowledge workers with the determination to make a difference. And here is why.

Take a look into this nearly three and a half minute long video clip under the title of “How to Use Employee Engagement to Boost Your Business” to see what I mean. Don’t worry, it will be worth while your three minutes, for sure; in fact, after watching it I can guarantee you would be wondering why you may not have thought about Employee Engagement in the first place within your organisation a while ago. Yes, it’s that good:

How to use Employee Engagement to boost your business – Explania

Pretty compelling, don’t you think? Indeed, I thought so, too, myself! Even coming from someone, like me, who’s totally sold out on the whole concept of employee engagement, even though there may well be some folks out there who wouldn’t agree and state the whole thing is just an oxymoron; employee engagement as portrayed on the video is a reality and if your company doesn’t embrace in such way as described on the video clip, as an example, you may need to re-think about it twice. You may be doing something wrong, perhaps. What do you reckon?

The clip itself starts off detailing what are some of the main challenges that every corporation faces today: Achieve more with less, reduce costs, improve efficiency, etc. along with listing some of the main issues I have always believed are some of the main drawbacks from a lack of engagement by knowledge workers within their organisations and businesses (No, I am not going to spoil those for you, you would have to watch the video! hehe), to the point where it is mentioned how in today’s working environment something that, for decades, was considered the norm, may no longer be the case: satisfaction, i.e. or, better said, being satisfied at work is no longer good enough. So what can both businesses and knowledge workers do to take things into the next level, to walk that extra mile to help align a common set of business objectives and a co-shared, common vision then?

Well, apparently, employee engagement. Of course! And that’s exactly what you would be able to see from there onwards for what’s left of the video itself: a clear definition of what an engaged employee is all about, a description of some of the commonest traits they have AND share across with others and, most importantly, a good description of how they behave to excel at both quality and interacting with your customers building and nurturing those stronger than ever personal business relationships, which, we all know, are the ones that keep driving business revenue time and time again.

Of particular importance and relevance permeating through the last part of the video as well is the good and rather helpful description of engagement drivers: an inspiring organisational culture, and future vision, quality jobs, leadership, offering support, recognition, and opportunities to learn and grow. Probably easier seen than done, but, eventually, at the heart of the matter of how organisations could surely inspire and provoke that employee engagement to take place within the corporate environment and help empower knowledge workers to do their share as part of that both ways equation I mentioned above. That’s the beauty of the challenge ahead for most folks who still think that employee engagement is a myth or a scam, or totally driven by the organisation, top down, ignoring or neglecting the knowledge workers themselves, i.e. bottom up. It’s actually a balance that needs to be achieved between both of them in order to make it happen where everyone would benefit from it.

The advantages though are tremendously beneficial for both parties, as the fine folks over at SocialCast have demonstrated, once again, with another fantastic infographic on the topic of “Engagement Condition – How to Engage Employees in the Workplace” which speaks for itself, specially towards the end of it, looking from the other point of view, perhaps, the most interesting one, of the repercussions of not having an engaged employee workforce; quite revealing, to say the least (Click on the image to enlarge it to its original size):

The interesting thing from Employee Engagement though is that it’s not something new. It’s been there all along. It may have been hidden for a while, but it’s starting to re-surface again. It’s part of us all, human beings, as a society. It’s what the Social Web has managed to unleash and awaken from all of those years. It’s that urge for wanting to connect with other people, to belong to the group, to have that strong sense of ownership and responsibility, to stand out and being recognised for what we do, to strive for social good and social justice, for helping others without asking much in return, for knowing at the end of the day that you have gone the extra mile helping others achieve their own goals as well, like they will do in return with you at a later time. Failing to engage through experiencing and embracing all of that will probably, as an organization, get you in trouble, as we are starting to witness over the last couple of days, over here in Spain with movements like #15mani #15m #nonosvamos #yeswecamp #acampadasol #notenemosmiedo #esunaopcion that have resulted in an unprecedented keen interest on taking a stake in something that most of us considered long time gone and forgotten: regular citizens, like you and me, defining, peacefully, the next generation of politics and open government by utilising, to the fullest, the amplifying effect and extended reach of The Social Web:

(Spanish version of the video clip)

Hello world! Welcome to the 21st century! Are you engaging your knowledge workers yet?

The Evolution of the Knowledge Web Worker

“A knowledge worker is someone who gets to decide what he or she does each morning“, by Thomas A. Stewart, (Journalist & Author) is probably one of my all time favourite quotes that my good friend David Gurteen keeps sharing every so often in a couple of places. You gotta love those quotes. They are incredibly insightful and very resourceful to include in your presentations, blog posts, etc. etc. For sure. But I can imagine how there may well be a bunch of folks out there, who may not be doing Knowledge Management work, who may be wondering what Knowledge Workers are all about and how they can find them within their organisation, right? Specially, if you are looking for the right experts with the right level of acquired knowledge, experience, skills and know-how.

Well, walk no further! To the helpful Wikipedia entry on knowledge workers, here we have got this wonderful infographic by the smart folks over at SocialCast that describes, quite nicely, not only the origins behind information / knowledge workers, but also some good insights on the future knowledge worker, although, seeing how things are progressing, I would have probably chosen a different term for them: knowledge Web workers, as we keep relying more and more on the Social Web to conduct our knowledge work. Either way, the infographic is absolutely fantastic, so I thought I would go ahead and share it across with you folks to have a look into it further; if it is too small, click on the image to enlarge it back to its original source.

The other good thing though about this particular infographic is that, while going through it, I just couldn’t help remembering a presentation that my good friend, from down under, Stephen Collins, did nearly 4 years ago and which, while revisiting it again as I am working through this blog post, is now more relevant than ever, specially, as social networking tools are becoming more and more pervasive within the corporate environment and plenty of businesses are starting to wonder and think about how they can help facilitate and unleash the hidden talent within their own organisations: basically, their people.

So I thought I would bring it up again over here today, in this blog entry, to build further up on the follow-up I wrote back then. More than anything else to raise some awareness on what it could probably mean being a Knowledge Web Worker today, or Knowledge Worker 2.0, as Steve prefers to call us all, as well, as provide some additional background on where we, knowledge workers, all come from (Traditional KM) and where we are heading (Knowledge Sharing = The Social Web).

Of particular interest to people out there, I am sure, would be slide #58 that covers some of traits knowledge workers need to have in order to extend that reach, far and beyond, from traditional interactions into the 2.0 world. Probably plenty of common sense for most of you out there, I can imagine, but, nevertheless, a good reminder of us all, so that we don’t deviate elsewhere and focus on what we need to focus: help provoke and facilitate that social transformation where our businesses transition from being labour based into being knowledge based; the so-called Knowledge Economy.

Thus without much further ado, and to inspire some further reflections and thinking time for all of us on this very same topic and the changes we will be witnessing and experiencing around Knowledge (Social) Web Work (By the way, I strongly recommend you also have a look into today’s very thought-provoking blog post by Harold Jarche on Jobs? We ain’t got no jobs on this very same subject related to knowledge workforce and which I will be blogging more in detail shortly…), I am going to leave you all with Steve’s presentation, stored over at Slideshare, wanting to thank as well the good folks from SocialCast for triggering that trip down the memory lane with such a wonderful resource as that infographic on “The Evolution of the Knowledge Worker“:

Ohhh, and for those folks who may be looking for some other interesting and rather relevant infographics on this topic, you may want to have a look into this other one, still related to Knowledge Workers, over at the Mindflash blog, put together by Colin Dobrin, under the title “Who Is The New Knowledge Worker?“, which makes a pretty good and compelling comparison of the knowledge worker of the 70s and the knowledge worker of the 21st century. Very helpful to see where we are coming from, and, perhaps much more importantly, where we are heading already … with no way back!

Life In A Perpetual Learning State

There are plenty of rather inspiring short video clips out there that help define some of the transformational changes we are all going through, and / or being affected by, in multiple ways whether at work, or in our personal lives. I would probably venture to state that there isn’t a single aspect of us all, as humans part of a now more global and complex society than ever, that there isn’t a single aspect in our day to day lives that may not be affected by technology, specially, that thing called the Internet or that other preferred term by a whole bunch of us known as The Social Web. Even our own education system is being affected by it quite a bit and probably without an option to ever look back. And that’s eventually a good thing!

Have a look into this week’s inspiring video clip that I bumped into a few hours back and which I think is going to give us all a great start into a new week at work, and plenty of food for thought, too! Specially, if you are heavily involved with the Learning and Education field, which, as most of you know already, is another one of my other passions, specially the concept of Social Learning in a work environment.

The YouTube video tries to describe, and very effectively, in my opinion, the paradigm shifts we have all been witnessing, and experiencing!, for the last few years, around the topic of Education in the 20th century and Education in the 21st century. That comparison lasts for a little bit over 4 minutes and it’s worth while watching, for sure! It’s exciting times for learners nowadays, specially, if you compare the learning styles from those two centuries and what an eye-opening role technology, and the Social Web, has been having all along over the course of time, to the point, like I have already said, that the current Social Web has managed to transform, tremendously, the way we view both education and learning, whether at a classroom, or while on the job. Certainly, the learning from our fathers’ (Even that one of my own generation!) is no longer the learning from our children and youngsters today.

At least, it shouldn’t be. It’s that impact of technology that’s helping us re-frame the way we view education today, going from that “Filling the vessel” to that other “Kindling the fire” (What a fantastic metaphor, by the way, coming out from the video clip itself…); going from retelling to discovery; going from information transfer to learning to learn; going from timed based learning to outcome based learning; going from being textbook driven to research based driven; going from passive learning to active learning; going from working in isolation to collaboration (is everything); and the list goes on and on and on…

In short, making that final transition from school being irrelevant and meaningless to the students to having curriculum being connected to the students’ interest, experiences and talents, which is really funny, because I still find it pretty amazing how as soon as learners enter and engage on a learning activity they are presumed to be leaving behind the various tools they have loved to use and learn from in their own personal lives as if they could no longer use them for that particular learning activity as it would most probably not add anything further up than noise. Ha! Yet, it’s what they do on a constant basis as my good friend Harold Jarche has been claiming all along with his mantra of “Life in perpetual beta“. Life in a perpetual learning state!

Thus whether you are a learner, or an educator, and whether you are getting more or less exposure to the Social Web in your current learning activities “21st Century Education vs. 20th Century Education” surely is a great reminder of the giant leaps we need to be making to help prepare the road for the leaders of tomorrow, if not already today! Because after all, and like it’s mentioned on the video clip as well, if you were given a choice of what learning system you would want for you and for those around you, which one would you go for? Not sure what you would think, but somehow I would suspect the answer, this time around, is an easy one… if we would be prepared for it…

Are we?