Do new technologies increase staff engagement?
Not only do you have to sell your business on your strategy, you also have to sell your people on your strategy, including what isn't part of your vision. If they can buy into the fact that you have a plan and that you're trying to take them somewhere, even if the direction is not 100% defined, it's a lot easier to get that buy-in and gain momentum to move forward on deliverables. Hyperion was probably the best company I ever worked for because everybody was aligned to what the company was doing. They were vested in the stock price and it felt like that company was in lockstep.
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Strongly agree — Moderators should go on strike to protest AI-generated content8%
Agree — Moderators have a valid reason to go on strike45%
Neutral — I don’t have a strong opinion either way30%
Disagree — Moderators should find alternative solutions instead of going on strike13%
Strongly disagree — Going on strike is an excessive response to AI-generated content1%
Not sure/Don’t know — I need more information to form an opinion2%
Too many active projects at once42%
Poor communication46%
Too many customizations47%
Misalignment with business priorities35%
Skills gaps31%
Lack of resources26%
Other (please list in the comments)1%
For team morale, they had a huge fish tank at this site and they would take turns feeding the fish. When it was time to come back to corporate headquarters, they wanted to bring the tank back with them. The facilities people said, “No way are we putting a fish tank in here. You can tell them no right now.” It became a cultural jousting match, but we didn't end up moving the tank and the team was pissed. It had become the symbol of their freedom and we were taking them back into the corporate fold.
This e-commerce project wasn’t an IT-inspired idea. It was a competitive requirement and we recruited people from the IT group to support it. But the IT people that we put on that team had the greatest sense of job satisfaction that they’d ever experienced in their careers. Every morning they would have a scrum meeting where the marketing people would show them where sales were made on the e-commerce site the day before. The IT folks would then make coding changes to the site. They felt so viscerally engaged in the business process of selling the components, whereas the rest of the IT teams were three steps away from those transactions. The rest of the IT group was just in the background, helping the people that help the people that sell these products.
People are more engaged in what they're doing when they can see the real world results instantaneously. There’s a company out of Denmark called Bang & Olufsen that makes TVs that cost as much as a car. If you go into their production line in Denmark, you could ask anyone what their part was and how that linked to the next person, and the next person and so on. They had the highest staff engagement of any business in that country, even with the lowest wages, because everyone knew that they played an important role.
Everybody wants to have input and likes to hear the feedback when their input is accepted and utilized in the operation or development of something. They may like the role they have, but when we can gain everybody's input and then be able to acknowledge publicly that a time-saving idea came from this person at the help desk, for example, that really adds to employee satisfaction.