Driving Engagement with Compassion

There’s a trend now that has surfaced, I think it’s called “quiet quitting.” People are doing their jobs, not fully engaged, don’t want to step-up and do above and beyond. And there are many reasons for that. People can talk about it and debate it for hours. But the key point here is that engagement. I think companies are having trouble—many of them—keeping people engaged. So, what strategies or techniques do you use to enhance and maintain employee engagement?

That’s such a great question. I was just reading about quiet quitting in a New York Times article. So, thanks for raising it. Something that I think all management teams in the world right now are going to have to deal with. That’s a great question about engagement. I always go back to having a conversation with the employee and asking them what’s really important to them.
Is career advancement important to them? Are you giving them the right projects? Are you exposing them to certain levels of management? Are you giving them challenging projects? Is flexibility important to them? Is it really important for them to have the flexibility that they have been offered during the pandemic?
So, it’s really, for me, the engagement goes into demonstrating that you care about them as an employee, that you’re engaged. And you’re doing whatever it takes to advocate for them. So, if it’s advocating for them to get a promotion, if it’s advocating for them to move out of the area and go somewhere else because their work could be done remotely, but just making sure that you’re constantly checking in and engaging with the employees to ensure their needs are being met. I think this is just key to being a really good manager.