Hi Reader,

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One of my first supervisory roles was working in a call centre. I'd landed the promotion by accident, but it was better than being on the phones, and a whole extra £1 an hour, so I went with it. Part of the job was admin - clocking everyone in, clocking everyone out - and the rest was keeping everyone motivated. There was a whiteboard to track sales, a budget to give out prizes... all the stuff you'd expect to see in a 90's outbound telesales centre.

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The admin records I'd inherited were a mess. The previous supervisor had left, none of it quite made sense, and one day at the start of my shift, I vowed to get on top of it. I found a quiet corner of the office so I could think straight, and started cross-referencing the lists and the data. An hour or so later, the big boss arrived. He was a smooth-talking, 40-something salesman-type called Simon whose jokes weren't particularly funny, but everyone laughed loudly at them anyway because he was the boss. I didn't particularly like Simon, but I could see he was good at his job.

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I didn't see Simon come in, because I had my back to the call centre floor. He came up to me, and asked me what I was doing. I proudly told him that the records had been a mess for weeks, and here I was, finally getting it all sorted out. Simon wasn't as impressed as I'd expected him to be.

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"But look at the floor. Look at the sales board. It's dead out there. And you're hidden away back here doing admin!"

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I looked up, and I immediately knew he was right. Part of my job was to keep on top of the admin, but the other part was to keep everyone's spirits high and keep the sales rolling in. Ultimately, my proud conquering of the admin was the bit that could have waited. These 40 or so call centre employees were here now - and they needed to be motivated half an hour ago.

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Employee Engagement has become something of a buzz-phrase in the last few years, and with good reason. Fewer people say they feel engaged in their work, more people are 'quiet quitting', and the stakes are high. It's estimated to cost 50-75% of someone's annual salary to replace them when they leave. And when senior leaders leave, the figure is estimated to be 213% (and more besides - see here for the data). And quite apart from the costs of replacing people, who wants to be part of a team with people who don't care?

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So, if you're a leader, how do you keep your people engaged? And if you notice a brilliant colleague starting to talk about losing interest or going elsewhere, what can you do to help lift their spirits?

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Well, of course you'd expect me to start my answer with "kindness".

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Kindness builds empathy and trust, which are both fundamental to peoples' motivation and sense of engagement. Kind acts lower cortisol levels, reducing stress, and heighten brain chemicals like oxytocin (the trust and love hormone) and dopamine (the reward and motivation chemical).

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Having clarity in what you're doing matters, too - being clear on the 3 V's:

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Vision - "what are we trying to do?"

Values - "how will we do it? What's important to us along the journey other than just the results?"

Value - "how will we know when we're done? how do we quantify your contribution?"

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But the important thing is not to leave employee engagement to chance.

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It's a subject that my company, Think Productive, talks about a lot. And we're speaking at this year's CIPD Festival of Work to share more. Our Leadership expert, David Papa, will be "cracking the engagement puzzle" and sharing insights on how to understand human motivation, energise teams, and inspire greatness.

If you haven’t already registered, you can follow this link to register for free today at https://www.festivalofwork.com. And you can catch David on the L&D Stage on 11 June at 14.25.

And if you're there, make sure you drop by and say hello to the Think Productive team, on both 11th and 12th June. We’ll be at Stand O51, with goodies to give away and several members of the Think Productive team on hand if you want to pick our brains.

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Have a great week,

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Graham

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