Cultivate'23: Engage your employees

With a labor force still recovering from its pandemic lows, recruiting and retaining high-performing employees remains difficult. At this year's Cultivate, Neal Glatt, managing partner and co-founder of GrowTheBench.com, shared how growers can drive performance, coach employees to perform better and keep them engaged. 

What is an engaged employee? It's an employee who is involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. When running a business, these are the best kinds of employees. They're the workers who invest their time, energy and effort into their work. They do their work, go above and beyond, and are committed to the company's mission. 

Glatt notes that employee engagement is different from employee satisfaction or happiness. It's great and necessary to enjoy what you do for work, but a business needs employees who are engaged and committed to their jobs. 

Employee engagement is a massive driving force of success. Glatt explains that workers with high measures of engagement have higher profitability and productivity, as well as fewer safety incidents and quality defects, and less turnover and absenteeism.

Unfortunately, employee engagement is on the decline.

"Only about one in three employees is actively engaged," Glatt says. 

Luckily, there are things that business owners and managers can do to encourage employee engagement. Primarily, this practice is about focusing on certain ideas instead of others. 

Purpose > Paycheck

Instead of focusing on a paycheck, focus on your purpose. While a good paycheck is nice, work has to have meaning and purpose behind it more than anything. Glatt says this need for a purpose is especially important for millennial and gen-Z employees, but only one in three employees today strongly agree that the mission or purpose of their organization makes them feel that their job is important, so leaders have work to do in that department. 

Development > Satisfaction

Focus on employee development instead of satisfaction and fun. Employees today don't feel developed at their current companies, and so they'll leave to grow at a new business. 

Coach > Boss

Be a coach instead of a boss. Helping an employee get to a point of consistent, near perfect performance is the ultimate goal, and employees need coaches to help foster their performance and well-being. 

Ongoing conversations > Annual reviews

Always give employees feedback on how they're doing. Annual performance reviews just don't work. If you think about a football or basketball coach, they're constantly giving their players feedback after every play, not just after the Super Bowl. 

Strengths > Weaknesses

Teams that focus on strength perform better. Good leaders help their employees find and maximize their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses. 

Life > Job

Everyone wants a good job, but a job is no longer just a job. Jobs are our lives, and people are placing much more importance on work.