Build from the inside-out: Would you want to work with you?

We continue to bring employee engagement to the front burner and its impact on retention because it’s a talent issue worthy of C-Suite focus.

Using the human body analogy, the head leads rules and directs. What’s really going on with the head can be likened to the leadership challenge. The head contains the brain and is constantly in work mode like most business leaders.

First off, let’s explore some inside-out opportunities. Leadership measures need to be kick-started at your organisation to help drive employee engagement because employees are looking to leaders to win their hearts and minds. Enough of leaders shouting, throwing tantrums, passing the buck, playing blame games, showing concern only for the numbers and displaying hierarchical arrogance. These traits do not provide for inspirational or conducive work environments. You just create an opportunity to complicate leadership and actually set your organisation back, no matter how long it takes to manifest.

As a leader, you owe it to “leadership posterity” to make good your time as the leader – now this cut across from CEO to line manager supervising only one staff. Make good your time as a leader. Provide inspirational leadership. Learn what it takes if you have a deficiency but make your time as a leader count.

So back to the human anatomy analogy – The torso of a human being is the main part of the body and made up of the vital organs that actually keep humans alive including the heart. Within an organisation this can be termed as the workforce, made up of middle to senior managers and leaders – vital organs of the organisation. The relationship of the head and torso drives the primary control of the human body and coordinates balance and reflexes for the entire body as a whole.

If the head (leadership) drives good practices which include employee engagement, it becomes of material importance to the torso (middle to senior managers and leaders) and hence a key area of competitive advantage which speaks to talent management, leadership development and culture to say the least.

As the old management adage says, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Unless you measure something you don’t know if it is getting better or worse. You can’t manage for improvement if you don’t measure to see if employee engagement is rising or falling. Now wouldn’t it be interesting to measure retention and employee engagement by line leader? Which of your line leaders are currently your weakest link in the area of employee engagement and end up driving people out the door? Are your really doing something about it?

Yes it is a known fact: Every time you lose a valued employee, you’re losing money, talent, organisational capability and much more. The more stable your workforce, the more focused you can be on your mission, company purpose and bottom line.

“Culture is to an organisation what personality is to an individual”. If your organisation was to conduct a psychometric/personality test or a 360 degree feedback session and the results came out, would you want to work for your organisation? More importantly, would you want to work with you? Build from the inside-out!

Ngozi Adebiyi is the lead consultant at OutsideIn HR, a firm that focuses on practical interventions that address the challenges of businesses today. The Firm also specialises in HR Business Partnering, Engagement & Retention with the goal of “Revolutionising HR in Nigeria”.