What’s in it for me?
Why should I care?
Why should I believe?
We all ask ourselves those questions throughout our day. Even the most selfless person, the most altruistic, the Mother Teresa among us, will make decisions based on the answers to these three questions.
How do you answer those questions from your employees’ perspective?
How does your employee engagement program answer those questions for your employees. Not you; not your board nor your agency.
How will your employees interpret your actions, your decisions, the company mission and purpose to answer those three questions for themselves?
As you go about executing ways to boost your employee loyalty, retain your key talent, raise your employee engagement scores, how will those decisions be interpreted by your employees as they ask these three questions:
What’s in it for me?
Why should I care?
Why should I believe?
I read and hear a lot of ideas on how to improve employee engagement and loyalty and retain key talent. And those planning these strategies and programs, tactics and trinkets, are very excited about their ideas and programs. They have created programs, etc that answer these three questions for themselves in ways they find satisfactory; as do consultants and agencies who help them with their solutions. Them being the company and their being the agency.
But what I see too often is an echo-chamber discussion that offers answers for the participants in these planning stages. And employees are not included. Ironic in a dark and comic way, that employee engagement planning sessions omit employees.
So, let's say you're not ready to invite employees into your employee engagement planning session. Cool. It happens. I made that mistake.
One way to span that gap of understanding is to ask yourself, If our employees saw this plan, how would they answer these three questions from their perspective?
What’s in it for me?
Why should I care?
Why should I believe?
Disclaimer: I am not smart enough to conceive of these questions. However, I am smart enough to remember hearing them at a Gazelles Growth conference from 2006 or 2007. Verne Harnish, The Growth Guy, shared them during a presentation. They have stuck with me ever since.
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