Ice-breakers
A handy and flexible tool to make your meetings more dynamic and engaging!
"Far beyond the performance of tasks required by the employment contract, commitment is only freely given. It cannot be bought; its true motivation is intrinsic. It is the difference between – I do what I am asked and I am on time. I give the best of myself – and I refuse a job offer elsewhere because I believe in my company!".
– Janine Karam, employed for 25 years in various companies, here and elsewhere.
Engagement is a key factor in organizational prosperity and has a direct impact on productivity, innovation, brand image, and the overall financial and health of the company. An engaged employee is invested in and believes in the mission of their organization/team. The quality of engagement directly depends on the quality of the relationship between the employee and their manager, regardless of their leadership style.
To prevent Dalida's song "Paroles, paroles et encore des paroles" from becoming your employees' mantra, revisit these concrete strategies that will allow you, as a leader, to play an active role in creating, improving and optimizing your employees' engagement.
- From the moment of hiring, the onboarding process has the potential to trigger the new employee's engagement process; if the steps in the process are neglected, the newcomer may already be thinking about leaving.
- The departure of an employee can be a golden opportunity to gain insight into variables you have the opportunity to improve.
- Hire strategically: prioritize profiles that can create synergy or improve it within the existing team.
- Take care of the new employee's welcome and integration process: sending documents to be completed before their first day, setting up their workspace, availability of the equipment and software they will need, sharing relevant documentation, introducing colleagues and direct partners, peer mentoring, etc.
- A team-building activity or team training workshop, planned quickly, helps strengthen the integration of the newcomer into the team.
- Thank the departing employee and explore the reasons for their departure with them. If there is bitterness, listen; behind the bitterness, there are ways to improve so as not to repeat the mistakes.
– “The pig said to the hen: eggs, for you, are a partial commitment, bacon, for me, is a total commitment!” – Yvon Deschamps, humoriste québécois.
- The leader's role is to ensure the right balance between under-commitment and over-commitment, to understand and remedy the reasons for the former, and to balance the latter to protect their employee from the harmful effects of burnout.
- Encourage employees to take breaks.
- Avoid sending emails after work hours or outside of regular business hours.
- Recognize efficiency rather than long hours.
- Review workloads and redistribute, if necessary.
- Encourage taking vacations and resting.
- Allow for disconnection and personal life priorities (going to medical appointments, parent meetings, etc.).
- Encourage and celebrate the pursuit of personal projects.
- Set an example by knowing and respecting your own limits.
“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek
- Beyond commanding and enforcing deadlines for achieving targets, the leader's responsibility is to support humans by helping them develop their full potential.
- Acquiring and adopting the skills inherent in a leader-coach role takes on its full meaning in this context. Fulfilling this role requires training and is far from giving advice over coffee, because the relationship you establish with your employees determines their willingness to commit to the success of your shared project.
- Individual coaching, mentoring, 360 assessment, etc., several possibilities are available to you as a leader to allow you to know yourself and target your challenges.
- Train yourself: certain skills are essential and transversal to develop your leadership in order to succeed in the relationship with your colleagues, such as emotional intelligence, engaging communication, constructive feedback, etc. and can/must be acquired and improved.
- The annual Workplace Learning Report (2023) survey conducted by Linkedin shows that 94% of employees surveyed would continue working in the same company longer if it invested in their professional training, 94%!
- An employee stuck in a role that doesn't allow them to reach their full potential becomes bored and demotivated. If nothing changes, disengagement is the order of the day.
- If employees are encouraged and given the opportunity to develop their skills within the company, they can consider a long-term career within the company, both laterally and upwardly. This allows the company to retain and benefit from its talent, rather than losing it to competitors.
- Prioritize skills development, allocate the necessary budget and time to it.
- Any training aimed at improving physical and/or mental health will have a direct impact on the level of engagement, even if it concerns personal finance management, nutrition, etc. and is not directly linked to the team's objectives.
- Involve your colleagues in becoming mentors for new members of the team. There's nothing more rewarding than sharing your knowledge and expertise. It also facilitates knowledge transfer.
- Team-building activities, happy hours, and lunch & learns are also great opportunities that promote closeness, the learning of new skills, and the sharing of ideas and best practices.
- Well-being at work promotes employee engagement. It's a driver of performance and a legal obligation. Employees increasingly aspire to a seamless integration of their professional experience into their personal lives.
- The climate of psychological safety at work is now considered to be a crucial condition and an important lever for increasing retention, improving satisfaction and impacting employee engagement within organizations.
- Work-life balance is a key requirement, especially after the pandemic and in the current context of global conflicts, labor shortages and economic instability.
- You can't invite yourself into your colleagues' virtual offices, but you can ensure they have the right equipment and software to perform their tasks and that they know who to contact if they have any problems.
- Ensure that the physical environment in the office is healthy and pleasant (temperature, noise, brightness, ergonomic chairs and desks, indoor plants, etc.), safe (mold, electrical wires, etc.) and promotes productivity.
- Encourage your employees to express themselves honestly, to give and share feedback with each other without fear of reprisal, to admit their mistakes and see them as learning opportunities.
- Trust them, give them autonomy and celebrate their initiatives in finding solutions and creative ideas.
- Develop teamwork projects, especially if daily tasks don't provide the opportunity. A sense of belonging can be difficult to develop alone.
- Employees want constructive feedback: don't be afraid to give it regularly. It's like a child taking a test but never receiving an answer key. Just a grade that doesn't mean much.
- Honor who they are, not just what they do. Organizing activities and events to celebrate their achievements, both at work and outside of work, fulfills a basic human need: recognition.
- Provide a gym or physical activity classes at work or virtually, or a bonus for purchasing sports equipment or joining a fitness center.
- Uninformed colleagues tend to fill the void with stories from their imagination, and unheard colleagues will feel betrayed. Hallway conversations will be heated, but for the wrong reasons.
- Communicate the organization's mission, vision, and values clearly and regularly. Not just when hiring.
- Present the purpose of the team and the employees who make it up, highlighting the meaning of what you accomplish and the connections between the different roles.
- Discuss transparently changes, both small and large, internal and external, that directly and indirectly impact employees' daily lives. Clarity paves the way for trust.
- Get to know each member of your team, build trust, engage in transparent conversations, and practice active listening.
- Make the employees you perceive as the least engaged your best allies: Deepen your discussions with them and listen to them: it is in their answers that we find the meaning they wish to give to their engagement and the elements on which you can intervene.
- During your individual meetings with your colleagues, dare to ask the question: If today you decide to leave the organization, for what reasons will you do so?
- Talk to him about his career goals, what he enjoys most about his work, what changes he would like to see implemented, and what might lead him to consider leaving the organization.
- Survey data, when analyzed intelligently and used effectively, are a wealth of information relevant to the issues raised and thus enable targeted and effective interventions. They are also a source of new ideas.
- Being evaluated by your team, managers, and partners clearly indicates that you want to grow as a leader and help your team develop. This improves your employees' experience and boosts their engagement.
- Explore opinion and retention surveys, even those where you are the central subject.
- To get optimal buy-in, be sure to clearly communicate the reason for collecting information and what you plan to do with the results.
- To maintain a climate of psychological safety, respect anonymity.
- Share aggregated results in a team meeting where you can continue the discussion with your colleagues. Don't just send an email with numbers and graphs.
- Take concrete action: A survey that goes unanswered is a missed opportunity that breaks trust and is a source of frustration for employees.
Between the advent of artificial intelligence, the development of robot machines, the idea of universal basic income that is back in societal debates, economic instability and the generalized shortage of labor, commitment goes beyond that of the employee towards his organization to that of the human towards his society. The list of strategies that you, as a leader, can adopt to optimize this commitment is even longer, richer and more diversified, its source being the human that is your employee and the human that is you.
A handy and flexible tool to make your meetings more dynamic and engaging!
"Janine, we're equals here. I just have a different role and responsibilities than you. You don't respect me less or more by calling me by my first name. I want to earn respect from my colleagues."
Identify the practices you already master and those that need to be implemented
Deploying modern, effective, and deeply human leadership is not easy. It's demanding. Sometimes uncomfortable. But above all, it has become essential.
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