Three Ways Maintaining Employee Engagement is Like Maintaining Your Car

To the first we will say, yes your client or customer is the basis of your revenue, but the basis of your business, is actually your employees.

This brings us to the second point that your business should run like a well-oiled machine. Since your business effectively runs because of your employees, it would seem that the trick to achieving saying number two is to focus heavily on employee engagement.

Of course, unlike your car, your employees don’t come with a manual to guide you; however, we have found that some mechanical guidelines can indeed be applied to your employee satisfaction/engagement and retention plans for a successful business.

Ignoring Recommended Scheduled Maintenance

One of the worst things that you can do for your car is ignore the recommended scheduled maintenance. Just like you would browse a site like this if you were looking to upgrade or maintain car parts, likewise for your business, this means regularly scheduled maintenance of your staff.

For your business, this comes in the form of all-hands meetings that keeps everyone on the same page of what is going on, as well as setting clear goals and monitoring activity and performance. This also means offering critical tools, like training and mentoring, in order to make sure that your staff is engaged, motivated, and capable of working at highest capacity.

Ignoring the “Check Engine” Light

It should be obvious to any car owner that when the “check engine” light comes on that something is wrong. If ignored, the problem can go from minor and affordable – like a £20 air filter – to major and very costly – like replacing the oxygen sensors for £250 or your catalytic converter for £1,000. However, few business owners heed the signs of a “check engine” light when it comes to their workforce.

When employee turnover is high and employee engagement is low, these are part of the work-force check-engine light.

When employees are dissatisfied with their positions and are leaving or are working, but unenthusiastically and with little motivation, it is up to the business owner to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it – which by the way doesn’t just mean throwing money at it.

Avoiding doing so could lead to a toxic work environment and to the company losing many potentially good employees. It is actually far more costly in the end to keep hiring and training new employees than to invest in retaining and mentoring current employees.

Continuing to Drive When the Engine is Overheated

Business is booming and that is great, but remember that the amount of clients you take on and the quantity of work that you promise them needs to be achievable and able to be delivered. There is almost nothing that can burn out your staff more than promising an amount of work that they cannot physically deliver.

Constantly hitting walls with deadlines that are unable to be met and faced with an unrelenting work load can have the same effect on employees as when you drive your car when the engine is overheated. Sure, it will keep going for a while, but then it will burn out and crash in a big way that can be very costly.

This can be anything from increased sick leave to employees leaving for other employment. Not to mention that when the client doesn’t get what was promised, that affects your business as well. It’s important, then, to gauge where your employees are at and be able to accurately predict what they are capable of delivering on. Good employee moral means increased productivity and higher benefits for your business.