Organisational Gold Dust - Peak engagement, motivation and performance

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Organisations talk a lot about Employee Engagement. On the face of it, this promises much. Truly engaged employees contribute more, give better service, embrace change, are stronger advocates for brands and are more creative. As a result, many organisations are investing huge sums of time, effort and money into defining, understanding and improving the engagement of their people. So how do we ensure that this is not another false dawn and doesn’t join the list of popular initiatives that have failed to transform business in the way they were intended?

We believe two factors are vital to ensuring peak levels of engagement, motivation and performance:

  • Personal Accountability – This is the single biggest determinant of how well people perform at work and when it comes down to human achievement, there is one factor that is beyond doubt … you cannot make someone perform to their best. They will only give their all and perform to their maximum potential if they choose to. You can pay them more, you can “performance manage” them or give them additional benefits. It makes little difference. People will only ever do anything to the very best of their ability - using all their capabilities, strengths and talents to the full - if, and only if, they choose to. The key to successful people development initiatives in the workplace is in building the desire within people to make this choice time and time again.

  • Trust – Individuals do not succeed alone. Trust underpins everything. Every successful reputation, every successful relationship, every successful partnership and every successful business venture. A lack of trust severely hampers creativity, collaboration and the willingness to develop and change. The greater the levels of trust in the workplace, the more people will be willing to adapt and change, the more likely they will take a risk and try something new, the more they will commit, the greater the loyalty they will show and the more they will contribute and achieve. Leaders within an organisation have a huge role to play in creating the culture of trust that underpins sustainable top level engagement, motivation and performance in the workplace.