I was astonished when recently my eleven years old son Jomar shouted: “Yeeeaaahhh, tomorrow school starts!” It was on the day before his school in Manila was re-opening after a two months summer break. I have to admit that when I went to school, I and my classmates were never feeling like this. The disappointment that the school holidays were over was clearly dominating our thoughts in our school days.
I give full credit to my son’s teachers and the school administrators for being able to create such a great atmosphere that the students are looking forward to go back to school.
If we transfer that now to a business context: how many of your subordinates would shout , let us say after a one month leave period, “Great! Tomorrow, I am going back to work!”. Not many, I guess.
And still, engaged employees are the ultimate goal for companies. A study in 2012 among 1,500 employees in the U.S. by MSW Research in cooperation with Dale Carnegie Co. about the functional and emotional elements that affect employee engagement revealed that there are three key drivers:
- Relationship with immediate supervisor
- Belief in senior leadership
- Pride in working for the company
Employees say that it is the attitude and actions of their immediate supervisor that is key. A “caring” manager that is not only interested in work issues, but takes also interest in his subordinates’ personal lives, their development, their health and well-being has a major impact on his employees’ engagement and thus their performance (and, ultimately, the department’s and the company’s performance).
Committed and dedicated employees also have a positive impact on customer engagement, resulting in higher customer loyalty which again leads to a better company performance.
So, creating an engaging environment to enable top performances of employees and students is a crucial challenge for supervisors and companies as well as for teachers and schools.
