The Very Best Way to Engage Your Employees During Uncertainty

We live in a world where many unknowns and uncertainties face our employees every day. This environment of uncertainty affects their moral, engagement, and productivity. 

I want to share with you the five secrets providing a secure and safe environment for your employees.

But first, I have to ask you a few questions.

Have you worked at a place where:

  • You had no sense of control;
  • Leaders didn’t care about your ideas or creativity;
  • You are just punching the clock; 
  • There was no purpose or fulfillment;  
  • You  were in a dead end job;
  • You were bored out of your gourd;
  • There was no personal or career growth;  
  • You didn’t feel belonging/inclusion; or  
  • You had to constantly be in defense mode because it was not emotionally safe to be vulnerable?

If any of the above are prevalent in your business, you can be pretty certain that employee moral, engagement, and productivity are suffering–even more so in these uncertain times.

To perform well,  your people need to have these 5 psychological needs met.  I call them the Employee High 5. They are:

1) a sense of control; 

2) a sense of purpose;

3) a sense of growth; 

4) a sense belonging/inclusion; and 

5) emotional safety/trust/understanding.

To improve how you meet emotional needs within your team, I invite you to do the following: 

  1. Take a sheet of paper and list the names of your direct reports.
  2. Look at the Employee High 5 list and notice which employee rises out of the group as the one you want to better support.
  3. Evaluate where you believe the employee is on each of the five areas on the Employee High 5 scale-from 1-10 (10 being the best and 1 the worst).
  4. Then, with your employee’s consent,  meet together and ask him/her to rate themselves on the Employee High 5 list.  Let him/her know that you are trying to be a better leader and want to support the team better.
  5. If the employee is willing, jointly make a plan of action to begin to work on the most important need on the Employee High 5.
  6. Schedule a follow up with the employee over the next number of months. 

I dare you to do this. If you stay the course of elevating your people, you will elevate your results–I promise!

Stay safe and healthy,

Doug Nielsen

Helping leaders seize control of the one  thing they can in uncertainty–themselves.

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