Discover Your Strengths and Celebrate it!

Improving Employee Engagement through Strengths Based Development

Strengths-based Development April 2013 Presented by Brian Quebengco, Strengths Performance Coach

Individualization I Maximizer I Activator I Ideation I Strategic

Woody Allen, comedian, screenwriter, and director, once said: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” If this was ever true, it certainly isnʼt anymore. Success today requires a good bit more than good attendance.

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Why is Employee Engagement so important?

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Engaged employees plan to stay for what they give; the disengaged employees plan to say for what they get.

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The Business Case for Engagement

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The Gallup Organization in a landmark employee engagement study across multiple companies showed that people who knew their talents and had the opportunity to use their strengths every day were 6 times as likely to be engaged in their jobs, 3 times likely to report having an excellent quality of life and had 7.8 percent greater productivity.

The Business Case for Engagement

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DDI, with its compiled engagement database of thousands of employees across 200 organizations showed, for example, in a Fortune 100 manufacturing company, turnover in low-engagement teams averaged 14.5 percent, and absenteeism hovered around 8 percent. For highly-engaged teams, absenteeism was only 4.8 percent, and turn over came down to 4.1 percent.

The Business Case for Engagement

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Towers Perrin, looking at over 35,000 employees across dozens of companies, showed a positive relationship between employee engagement and sales growth, lower cost of goods sold, customer focus, and reduced turnover. For example, highly engaged employees are almost three times more likely to feel that their company really cares about customers and has the ability to serve them better than their competitors.

The Business Case for Engagement

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The Corporate Executive Board surveyed 50,000 employees in 59 organizations worldwide. Employees with lower engagement are four times more likely to leave their jobs than those who are highly engaged. Even more important, moving from low to high engagement can result in a 21 percent increase in performance.

How committed is your Organization in building the strengths of each associate?

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Doug Conant (Campbellʼs Soup CEO 2001 – 2011)

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“The company wasn't ready to do this when I got here. But, you know, we didn't really have a choice. People felt as if we were on death's doorstep, and everything they had tried wasn't working. When I got here, I'm sure they thought that the engagement program wasn't going to work either and that I wasn't going to last. So the organization wasn't initially responsive to my plan. But you just have to keep working the territory and keep pushing as far as the organization is capable of going. You have to bring fierce resolve to the work. As a result of that resolve, engagement is embedded into our culture. For me, there simply is no other way.”

But before a company can take advantage of all those benefits, employees need to know their strengths.

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How does a Strength look like?

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Consider these people who consistently deliver a nearly perfect performance in a specific task:

•  A waiter who is consistently one step ahead of your needs

•  A hotel clerk who always makes checking in an efficient and even pleasant experience

•  A call center representative who quickly “wins over” every upset customer

•  A nurse who routinely administers injections so smoothly that patients “donʼt feel a thing”

•  A bank teller who always recommends the perfect services for each customerʼs financial needs

•  A sales person who consistently builds long-term loyalty in client relationships

How much can we change a person after we hire him? And, given a finite amount of time and money, where are we likely to see the most improvement?

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Anatomy of a Strength

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THE STRENGTHS EQUATION

Talent (a natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving)

X Investment (time spent practicing, developing your skills, and

building your knowledge base)

= Strength (the ability to consistently provide near-perfect

performance)

Building a Career on Your Strengths

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Most stay for the work, but leave for the career.

Building a Career on Your Strengths

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Strengths driven guidelines for personal development:

1.  Own your own development.

2.  You are successful because of who you are – not who you arenʼt.

3.  You cannot be successful alone.

4.  What about my weaknesses?

5.  Make sure your plan is one you would CHOOSE to do, not one you feel you SHOULD do.

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Managers must know the strengths of each employee, then create opportunities for employees to use them.

Relationship Trumps Skills

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Employees knowledge of their managers as “people” behind their titles appears to impact engagement levels more than managers actions.

Itʼs not just what managers do, but also who they are.

Tips for a Meaningful discussion:

• Set a Positive Tone of Partnership

• Talk about the importance of the employeeʼs job and how it fits with the companyʼs larger goals.

• Discuss your employeeʼs top priorities. Many managers find gaps in perception, which have a negative impact on engagement.

• Ask “What kind of support do you need from me?” and “What kind of feedback is useful to you?”

• Talk about ways to use the employeeʼs talents (the ones that this person enjoys using).

• Ask about job conditions – What gets in the way of great accomplishments? What gets in the way of a great day at work? What does the employee enjoy the most?

• Agree to meet frequently. 20

Creating Lasting Impact

The greatest potential for growth and success comes from helping people discover and develop their most dominant talents.

• There is a strong connection between who people are and what they do best.

• There is a strong connection between what people do best and how they feel.

• There is a strong connection between how people feel and how people perform.

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Strengths Discovery Workshop

Greatness in any role requires that the employee has an opportunity to build on what he or she naturally does best. Discover and understand you and your team's talent with the help of Strengths Performance Coach, Brian Quebengco, at the Strengths Discovery Workshop (based on the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller StrengthsFinder 2.0)

To Inquire: 1. Call 8132732, 8132703, look for Juliet or Kali 2. Email us at inquiry@saltandlight.ph ; juliet.saltandlight@gmail.com

May 6: Strengths Discovery Workshop Aug 5: Strengths Discovery Workshop Nov 11: Strengths Discovery Workshop

9:00am to 5:00pm | Oakwood Premier, Ortigas Center 22