SearchI picked up Patrick Lencioni’s book The Truth About Employee Engagement in December 2015. eimagine had recently launched our own product to the market – Hddle, now rebranded as Chava.
Chava is an employee engagement app that started as an in-house project for our team to engage and connect offsite coworkers with the home office. Over time, it turned into a commercially available Platform as a Service product.
I’ve always wondered how you make offsite employees actually feel like part of the team. I think Chava is a great first step to reengaging with these types of employees and connecting them back to the office culture.
To assist in our development of Chava, we polled thought leaders across the country ranging from the CEO of a publically traded company to the founder of a 5-person marketing company. We asked them to prioritize our product’s features by what they believed would drive engagement in their companies. Regardless of company size, the features that bubbled to the top were (1) ability to connect with employees on their mobile devices, (2) ability to give and receive recognition, and (3) distribution of company information and news.
Not surprisingly, Lencioni has a similar playbook for employee engagement. He recommends (1) your job has to be measurable, (2) everyone needs to know their job matters to someone, and (3) employees to be understood and appreciated by someone in a position of authority.
It was refreshing, and honestly inspiring, to compare Chava to Lencioni’s work. To me, it was an outward validation that we on are the right path. We’ve witnessed firsthand that employee engagement is not simply about our employees. Building a culture of employee engagement benefits our customers, our partners, and even our Aqua Systems delivery guy. Engaged employees are more likely to be diligent in their work, have bigger smiles on their faces, and look to make things a little better than they found them.
Our company recently was selected as a Best Places to Work by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and as a finalist for Best Company Culture at the 2016 Mira Awards by TechPoint. This recognition stems from our focus on employee engagement, period. Whether your company is actively involved in employee engagement or still on the sidelines, I’d recommend you pick up a copy of Lencioni’s book and enjoy the content. He’s a great story teller and he has one great story to tell on employee engagement.
If you’d like to learn more about our employee engagement app, Chava, or to discuss ideas we’ve implemented, feel free to give me a call. I’m always ready to talk shop on employee engagement and share ideas and best practices.
Yours through engagement.
