Even Outsourced Workers Need to Feel Engaged

October 31, 2014

In the tech industry, buzzwords and “buzz-phrases” come and go almost daily. But one that’s starting to show some strong staying power is the term “employee engagement.”

It basically encompasses the idea that if you keep you people interested or ‘engaged’ in what they’re doing for you at work, you stand a better chance of retaining the folks you invested so much time and money in. It’s an idea worth pursuing, and one way to do that is to build trust with your staffers.

That’s the idea behind a blog post by Scott Ence, a Human Resources “Business Partner” at inContact, the company whose cloud solutions “help you keep pace with your customers while building memorable and lasting relationships with them.”

Ence notes in a recent blog that “Successful companies achieve great results – and provide tremendous customer service – through their engaged employees.” In his study of the topic, he’s come up with two strong conclusions:

1 — An alternate definition of Employee Engagement could be Discretionary Effort, or, more simply, “going above and beyond.”

2 — Disengaged employees stay for what they can get, while engaged employees stay for what they can give.

Ence looks at the larger picture and believes that a feeling of trust on the part of the worker can go a long way toward building a lasting relationship. To that end, he offers three ways employers can help engender such feelings, and reap the benefits of employees that feel someone cares for them:

• Give Trust: Trusting others allows them to trust you, and leaders should take the first step in this exchange.
• Build Transparency: The more information that can be shared regarding your own ideas and initiatives, the team’s objectives, and the company’s mission and/or strategy, the better it will be for everyone.
• Commit Time: Leaders are frequently “too busy” for many things, but this absolutely cannot be one of the things you skip. If you desire to increase and maintain engagement, keep your team working and happy, you must make yourself available.

It sounds simple, but sometimes the best solutions are the easiest. As Ence concludes in his post, “Trust is a common thread in great workplaces, and great leadership. Build it.”