Signs of Disengagement—and What to Do About It

Botwin, who is CEO of SPC (Strategy People Culture) Consulting in Florham Park, New Jersey, offers 14 signs of disengagement:

Signs of Disengagement

• High turnover
• Lack of cooperation
• Lack of feedback
• Shaving of hours
• Absenteeism
• Quality less than capability
• Customer complaints
• High shrinkage
• Lack of pride/care in the business
• Lack of creativity and new ideas
• Unhealthy challenge
• Complaints don’t go to management
• Vendor dissatisfaction
• Lack of personal or professional celebration

What to Do

When you encounter disengagement, says Botwin, consider the following:

• Show your employees you care about them and their role
• Talk openly and honestly
• Provide clear constructive feedback
• Ask for opinions … and listen … and show you listened
• Get in a trench together and roll up your sleeves

In addition, says Botwin, remember:

• Management’s job is to help engage and motivate the workforce, not just to tell people what to do
• Engaged employees bring stronger business results

Compensation.BLR.com, now thoroughly revamped with easier navigation and more complete compensation information, will tell you what’s being paid right in your state—or even metropolitan area—for hundreds of jobs. Try it at no cost and get a complimentary special report. Read more.

To improve engagement and culture, Botwin offers his C.A.R.E.™ Model. He lays it out as follows:

• Conviction
• Doing what is right
• Adaptability & Accountability
• Being open to and embracing change
• Embraceing mistakes, but not permitting excuses
• Realness
• Being genuine, honest, and trustworthy
• Checking the ego at the door
• Enthusiasm
• Showing a passion for the business

If you can apply these principles, Botwin says, you are well on the way to improving your culture and building employee engagement.

Flex a Good Place to Start

Botwin offers flex as a good example of something to consider for building engagement. It may seem like “fluffy stuff,” but there are solid business reasons for considering it:

• Your competitors are offering it. (Where is the talent going to go?)
• It’s typically inexpensive
• Shows the employer trusts the employee
• Avoids burnout
• Increases retention
• Lowers facilities costs
• Allows longer customer service hours
• Gives employees more of a feeling of control
• Increases productivity
• Reduces carbon foot print through off-peak commuting
• Reduces absenteeism

Flex might be a great way to build engagement without major expenditures.

Flex, engagement, culture, Whew! All important, but more things to add to the already full compensation plate. “Maintain internal equity and external competitiveness and control turnover, but still meet management’s demands for lowered costs.” Heard that one before?  Many of the professionals we serve find helpful answers to all their compensation questions at Compensation.BLR.com, BLR’s comprehensive compensation website.

And there’s great news: The site has just been revamped in two important ways. First, compliance focus information has been updated to include the latest on COBRA, Lilly Ledbetter, and FMLA. Second, user features are enhanced to make the site even quicker to respond to your particular needs:

• Topics Navigator—Lets you drill down by topical areas to get to the right data fast.
• Customizable Homepage—Can be configured to display whatever content you want to see most often.
• Menu Navigation—Displays all of the main content areas and tools that you need in a simple, easy format.
• Quick Links—Enables you to quickly navigate to all the new and updated content areas.

The services provided by this unique tool include:

• Localized Salary Finder. Based on reliable research among thousands of employers, here are pay scales (including 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles) for hundreds of commonly held jobs, from line worker to president of the company. The data are customized for your state and metro area, your industry, and your company size, so you can base your salaries on what’s offered in your specific market, not nationally.

Try BLR’s all-in-one compensation website, Compensation.BLR.com, and get a complimentary special report, Top 100 FLSA Overtime Q&As, no matter what you decide. Find out more.

• State and Federal Wage-Hour and Other Legal Advice. Plain-English explanations of wage-hour and other compensation and benefits-related law at both federal and state levels. “State” means the laws of your state because the site is customized to your use. (Other states can be added at a modest extra charge.)
• Job Descriptions. The website provides them by the hundreds, already written, legally reviewed, and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandate that essential job functions be separated from those less critical. All descriptions carry employment grade levels to current norms—another huge time-saver.
• Merit Increase, Salary, and Benefits Surveys. The service includes the results of three surveys a year. Results for exempt and nonexempt employees are reported separately.
• Daily Updates. Comp and benefits news updated daily (as is the whole site).
• "Ask the Experts" Service. E-mail a question to our editors and get a personalized response within 3 business days.

If we sound as if we’re excited about the program, it’s because we are. For about $3 a working day, the help it offers to those with compensation responsibilities is enormous.

This one’s definitely worth a look, which you can get by clicking the links below.

Click here to get more information or start a no-cost trial and get a complimentary special report!

Follow Stephen Bruce on Google+