My company is a member of the Detroit Regional Chamber, and I recently volunteered to be a table facilitator for a ‘world café' style program put on by Right Management.

The focus of the workshop revolved around how to get and keep employees engaged with our organizations in light of the reality of down-sizing and leaning-out of staff over the last two years. We had a diverse group of business owners, executives and managers including major non-profits, services firms, medical institutions, and government agencies. One of the features of the process is that after a short time interval everyone leaves their first table and goes to another. Depending on the time allowed folks can end up with 2 to 5 other groups - all different - to interact with during the process. Our event had two moves after the initial discussion, which created a great networking opportunity as well.

Michigan - and especially southeast Michigan - has been particularly hard hit from the recession and it has impacted every aspect of for-profit, non-profit and government agencies in the form of having to do more with less. The resulting pressures are creating higher levels of stress. A big concern is what happens when things go get better - will we see a mass migration of our best employees? To get things started, we had just one simple question at each of the tables. The question related to what we can do keep employees engaged with our companies in the face of these difficult times.

Business owner comments
One of the business owners are our table had a great opening idea: What is it people like doing at your company? His approach is to sit down with employees and find out what it is they enjoy doing and make a conscious effort to help them understand we need to blend what they like with less favorite tasks. Share with them what needs to be done to support the business and engage them in what we are doing. Since his company has a many employees who are in the field providing service for customers, there tends to be a disconnect with folks in the office and the organization's bigger objectives. For this problem he likes to periodically schedule an in-the-office breakfast meeting so that everyone is at one place at one time. That way he can address everyone at one time and create a forum for folks to discuss important issues.

Mangers in two major non-profit organizations
Non-profits have unique problems in keeping people engaged - and volunteers in particular. For employees they identified the need to clearly and often re-engage employees in the mission - the ‘why we are here' picture. There tends to be a problem with non-profit employees becoming ‘immune' to the mission, so it is important to reinforce what is best for the community or mission being served.

Another manager shared that they take time periodically to gather folks and share ‘mission moments' - sharing stories how what they have done has had a positive impact on the constituency they serve. Hearing positive and up-lifting stories of accomplishment is a big boost for engagement for both employees and volunteers.

Another technique mentioned by the non-profit managers is the practice of using personality profiling tools to create stronger alignment. One popular tool is the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This inexpensive test allows us and our employees understand the strengths and weaknesses of different personality types. This has two huge benefits. First it fosters better communications and interactions between differing personality types. Secondly - especially working with volunteers - we can be more careful in whom we put on what tasks and whom we put together on teams. I happen to be an ENTJ type from the MBTI assessment. This means I don't naturally get along all that well with folks with a more pragmatic, orderly and ‘touchy-feely' outlook. Because I know this, I can actively modify my behavior to have better success with other types. The important point here is we need to be careful whom we put into teams to work together - we might be mixing some dynamite.

Another great comment that came out relating to Non-profits and for-profit organizations is this truism: "Employees don't treat your customers any better than they are treated." I found this to be a particularly refreshing point of view. If the success of our business is at least partly dependant on the quality of interactions we have with customers - this is all by itself a HUGE reason to focus on employee engagement.

As a quick side story - I have had the privilege to listen to and talk with Bob Fish - founder of Biggby coffee in headquartered in Lansing Michigan - several times over the last 18 months. They have been growing at about a 50% annual rate - even through the recent recession. One thing that Bob stresses as critical is that every employee has to LIKE what they are doing and it has to SHOW. It's basically a condition of employment and shows up in the company's image, look, feel and culture. Needless to say, his company invests heavily in employee engagement and celebrates their little ‘success stories' in interactions with customers almost every day. Since I travel a lot and visit just about every coffee store and bistro imaginable - I can personally attest that what they do works - there is a marked difference in the experience that is consistent from Biggby store to store. I have visited at least 6 of them across Michigan over the last year.

Consultants who help companies with strategy, change management and human relations
Consultants have the advantage of visiting many difference organizations of varying sizes and industries. Here are some of the gems of wisdom I heard during the workshop.

There is a pervasive atmosphere out there in most work places of ‘people being nervous about everything'. Concerned about keeping their jobs, concern about their future financial security, their families, balancing work and home life, etc. His great observation is the importance for businesses to make it point to share information transparently with employees. "As-is' discussions presenting the brutal truth is not fun - but beats letting people come to their own conclusions - which usually are far worse than reality.

Low cost measures to increase employee engagement, loyalty and productivity abound. Here is the short list I gleaned:

• Effective communications. I agree with them - communicating openly and effectively is in the top three low-cost things we can do. What's important about this from my perspective is that to be effective, communications must be two-way. When we share information we need to get feedback on what was heard - to verify we got the job done. In addition, we must also allow for a method for communications to flow to us when there are issues. Problems are NOT like fine wine - they don't get better with time. So, finding out people have concerns and being willing to share the ugly realities in a timely way are very important as well.
• Making people feel important. Recognition and making a forum for people to be heard in a meaningful way both go a long way. One does not have to lavish expensive rewards. In fact, I argue that giving rewards to individuals that everyone can't somehow share in is a huge mistake. It's better that the recognition can be shared with the greater team. That's not to say a personal ‘thanks' is a bad thing - we just have be sure we spread it around equitably.
• Connecting people at the human level. Helping our employees feel connected to the other people and ourselves creates a community and builds a feeling of belonging and connectedness. Doing simple things to promote this are not costly - especially if it can be structured as part of routine work.
• Sharing credit where it is due. Nothing de-motivates and alienates people more than failing to give credit when deserved - or worse, allowing someone to take credit for something they did not do.
• Helping people understand the big picture - and where then fit in. Like communicating, this is very important. People want to feel part of the winning team and making a point to help them understand how they matter is important. The way I like to do this is to describe the organization as a bunch of people who work together in a value chain. A series of activities that results in rendering the product or service our organization provides. My question goes something like this: "The level of results we can give to our customers who pay are wages is directly limited to what?. . .. the weakest link in our. . . . chain." The chain of events that occur in our organization to deliver the goods. The add-on question I might ask is: "Who wants to be the weak link, limiting our results?" I then go on to point out that only by making sure we treat each other as customers and make sure all the steps of our process are working well do we have a shot at excellence.
• Point ‘A' thinking wont get us to point ‘B'. I love this. This goes back to an Einstein quote around the idea ‘the thinking that got us here won't get us where we need to go" To get employees to feel engaged and be at maximum productivity we must be willing to do things differently.

Managers and professionals who work in for-profit companies
I loved this comment from one of the managers: "People are going to think what they are going to think." The point he as making is that rumor mills tend to always put the worst possible spin on things, and we cannot control what people think. That said, he quickly pointed out that the best defenses for this include these actions: Remember people do want to feel special and cared-about. If we are willing to keep the communications lines open we don't give the rumor mill as much to work with. He also likes putting on a lunch-time pizza party reciprocally as a forum to show appreciation and foster better communications.

Yet another manager stressed that getting out of the office once is while for lunch or breakfast is important too. This encourages people to get to know one another outside the work place environment and helps to open up communication lines when we see each other as people with the same problems. Another manager supported this with suggesting that lunch meetings are designed to have people talk about common values and objectives both inside and outside of work was helpful.

Another manager pointed out that if down-sizing is in the future - it's best to share the truth. The conditions driving it and what the company's plan is to make it as smooth as possible. Making it clear that nothing is personal - it's business - and the greater good is what is being preserved. Sharing a sensible plan to deal with down-sizing goes a long way to reducing the fear of the unknown and that little rumor mill thing I mentioned earlier. An important point one manager made was this: "Knowing is better than not knowing - even if the news is bad."

In the face of down-sizing and needed to more with less, several managers brought up the possibility of offering ways for better work-life balance as a way to re-engage employees to reduce stress and improve productivity. To find ways to do this manger suggested that there be a structured and careful discussion with employees just two themes:

1. What do we need to be doing tomorrow to make the business - and our security better?
2. What do we need to STOP doing? This a great follow on question - as this identifies activities that are not relevant to where we are headed currently and by eliminating them, we free up resources for important things and reduce stress.

Another manager chimed in here with a theme of "building a thrive mode' versus just a ‘survive mode'.

Another manager piggy-backed on this with this thought: "Talk through a common understanding of the difference between ‘activities' and ‘making progress' to our objectives. I think this is great and ties in nicely with the ‘what we should do and stop doing' to succeed.

Some final thoughts
The nature of a ‘world café' is not to fix all the world's problems - but it is a helpful process to bring a large number of people together to have a meeting of the minds on important issues. As you can see here, the distillation of what I captured in less than two hours time we very helpful.

In my practice of helping organizations improve business processes to improve the bottom line, quality, speed and customer satisfaction I use tools in Operational Excellence (OpEx) like ‘Kaizen", "Fishbone" diagrams and the ‘5-Whys' to name a few. These are powerful methods to bring large and small groups together to quickly identify what is important and then move to the right actions to make things better. Relating to the whole issue of employee engagement - these and other methods in OpEx are powerful ways to solve many of problems discussed here - and take employee engagement and productivity to the next level.

About the Author:
Mr. Ron Crabtree, CPIM, CIRM, CSCP, MLSSBB is president of MetaOps, Inc., - a training and consulting firm that specializes in business innovation and transformation. He is an internationally recognized expert and author in cutting-edge business process improvement methodologies.

He has co-authored three books on operational excellence and is published in multiple business publications to a global audience. He serves as adjunct faculty for Villanova University and the University of San Francisco as the lead subject matter expert in Lean Six Sigma, Supply Chain and Lean Supply Chain.

He has personally mentored thousands of people in hundreds of companies and government operations around the world generating countless millions of dollars in bottom-line results for his clients. For more you can review his ezine series at www.operationalexcellenceedge.com or by e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it