A successful employee engagement program at one organization might look very different than a successful employee engagement program at another organization.
And, what might have worked spectacularly for you last year might be a total dud this year. There are so many factors to a successful employee engagement program you need to consider, and putting it together can start to feel pretty complicated.
We’ve been down this path dozens of times, both with new customers and with customers we’ve had for years who are constantly looking at refreshing or rebooting their program. These types of programs can’t just be turned on and the left running for years and years. They need nurturing. They need some love.
Successful Employee Engagement Programs Change
We love talking to our customers and prospects and learning about what they want to achieve, and how they want to do it. The level of creativity married with strategy is off the charts, and it’s exciting to be in these conversations!
Sometimes we find ourselves in conversations with people who know how they want to do things but they really don’t know what they want to do. In other words, they have the HOW down but they haven’t figured out the WHY. Without knowing your WHY, your HOW doesn’t really matter much. Simon Sinek talks a lot about finding and defining your WHY.
You might think this is super basic stuff but we find ourselves in conversations regularly where we are wondering what the WHY is. We get exceited talking about the HOW, too, don’t get me wrong, but we need a WHY. The WHY is the goal, the objective, the target, the metrics. It’s what we work towards and how we know when we got there.
Considering the changes that can happen in an organization, industry, or market, this why is critical to understand. The how can change to best meet the needs imposed by those changes. Your why should be so principled that no matter what changes happen, your why largely stays the same.
Successful Employee Engagement Programs Learn from Experts
Imagine having to go down a path you’ve never been down before. This journey you’ll take will have pitfalls and various dangerous elements. Oh, and you have to go down this path in the dark.
Scary, right?
Now imagine you had a guide who had been down that path many times and had every pitfall and danger memorized. They had night vision goggles allowing them to see, and be ready for the unexpected. They had guided many first-timers down this journey, and were confident in their ability to guide you.
That provides a sense of security, doesn’t it?
As you put together your soon-to-be successful employee engagement program, we invite you…. we beg you…. to find and learn from experts who have been down that path. These experts should ask you the right questions for where you are at on your journey. They should know about some of the hazards and pitfalls that are coming up, and guide you through them with ease. They might suggest a change on how you want to do something, and they might ask you, “WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?!”
The experts, the people who have been down this path many times, know that without a WHY nothing else matters. The how, the tools, the team… they just don’t matter. You need to define your why.
These experts should know enough to let you come up with your own creative solutions and ideas. They’ve seen many ideas work. They also recognize a lot of companies have gone far down the road to address issues and fix problems. They know the best question for an expert is “how do I fix this problem,” rather than, “I’m going to do it this way, can you just make it work?”
At Snowfly we’ve talked to a lot of leaders and program administrators about employee engagement and incentives programs. We’ve heard all kinds of ideas… some brilliant, some that seem destined to fail. We’ve talked to people who have a clearly defined why and others who haven’t even thought about it. We’ve talked to large organizations and startups, healthcare and hospitality. We talk to call centers, sales teams, CEOs, etc.
Our exposure to many ideas and ways of thinking is one of our biggest value propositions we can bring to you.
We want to hear your ideas. We also want to bring what we’ve learned over many years to the table, and to benefit your organization. We have seen things that might help us suggest you try, or not try, various strategies.
We’re open to anything. We’ve seen crazy ideas be successful. We also know what a successful conservative employee engagement program could look like.
For us, the best relationship is with someone who brings their best ideas to the table and wants to learn from the years of exposure we’ve accumulated. Want to tap into that institutional knowledge? It’s easy! Let’s start a conversation see how we can work together to really accomplish your WHY!
