Building Employee Engagement for a Stronger Safety Culture (part 3)

differentiated workforce10-things-employee-engagementThe first step to building levels of employee engagement is to engage in workforce differentiation to build a stronger safety culture.  It’s a common “rookie” mistake of first time supervisors and managers to want to treat everyone on the team in the exact same way: ” I just treat everyone the same because I want to be fair.” [content_protector password=”EeP-3″ identifier=”EeP-3″]

The problem with that is, if we’re leading our engaged employees in the same way we’re leading our disengaged employees, we’re not going to lose our disengaged employees–we’re going to lose our engaged employees.   Your engaged players know there’s a difference between their level of performance and that of all other employees.  And if you’re not acknowledging that difference, they’ll look for an employer who will.

Take a few moments to think about your current workforce.  If you are a manager or supervisor, think about your direct reports.  If you have no direct reports, think about those in your area of influence.  Who among them are engaged (your top performers)?  Who among them are unengaged (your solid performers who could use a boost in performance)?  Who among them are disengaged (your problem children)?

fctc-online-bannerKeep in mind while doing this exercise that a disengaged employee doesn’t have to be a poor performer.  You may very well have a disengaged person on your team who is very good at his/her craft, but who wants nothing to do with the team dynamic you’re trying to build.  If that’s the case, they are very likely uncommitted to safe behaviors on the job.  And because of that, they are putting others at risk.  We’ll take a look at what to do with this category of employee in another issue of the newsletter.

That’s it for this edition of Recordable INSIGHTS. Until next time.

~ES

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About the Author

Eric Svendsen
Eric Svendsen, Ph.D., is Principal and lead change agent for safetyBUILT-IN, a safety-leadership learning and development organization. He has over 20 years experience in creating and executing outcomes-based leadership development and culture change initiatives aligned to organizational goals, and he personally led the safety-culture initiatives of a number of client organizations that resulted in “best ever safety performance” years for those companies.