You hire each employee to fulfill a specific role within your organization. And, with rare exceptions, most of your team members want to meet or exceed your expectations. But they also want more. Your employees yearn to feel a deep passion for their work and inspired by your company’s mission. They long to make a positive impact on the world around them. As their leader, you should desire these things for your team. By unleashing their passion, you’ll help your staff feel empowered, fulfilled, and happy. But that’s not all. New research shows, “71% of executives say that employee engagement is critical to their company’s success,” and “63.3% of companies say retaining employees is harder than hiring them”. When your employees have this deep connection to their jobs, your company will reap numerous benefits. Engagement will go up. Turnover will go down. And your team will become an innovative, problem-solving force that fosters productive relationships and pursues continuous learning -- all in the name of moving your enterprise forward. So how do you encourage, tap into, and nurture your employees’ passions? You:
Create a culture where forward-thinking risk-taking is celebrated and rewarded
Demonstrate how each employee contributes to the organization’s success
Provide continuous, varied, and tailored professional development opportunities
Set the Culture Your organization has to facilitate passion. And your company culture must embrace innovation, risk-taking, and rapid adaptability. Why is this important? A major long-term study shows companies with the best corporate cultures -- those that encouraged all-around leadership initiatives and highly appreciated their employees, customers, and owners -- grew 682 percent in revenue. If that’s not incentive enough, another U.S. study shows disengaged employees cost organizations around $450-$550 billion per year. That means that old-school, rigid micromanaging and narrow-focused supervision is out. Collaborative, flexible, trusting, and visionary leadership is in.Your employees need to know that it’s okay to fail if a calculated risk doesn’t pay off. They also need to know that you’re not after perfection -- you’re after results. And, while today’s performance is important, tomorrow’s growth and evolution are more so. This organizational stance has to be championed from the top down. As a leader, you need to model the behavior you want to see in your employees. Let your own passion show before you can expect your team to reveal theirs.
Show the Impact To be genuinely invested in and truly passionate about their work, your employees need to see that what they do matters. To help them recognize this, show them how their effort impacts their department, organization, and community. When each employee can trace their output to a larger outcome, they’ll take ownership of it and strive to improve. Here are a few ways you can show your employees their real impact:
Have regular department meetings where each employee shares what they are working on and can provide feedback
Go over an organizational chart with staff and explain how their effort is essential for its overall workflow and achievement.
Arrange interdepartmental meetings to see and discuss where their work fits into the larger process
Encourage volunteerism in the community, so team members develop a connection to the company’s future potential customers -- and employees.
Provide the Opportunity When you invest in an employee’s development, you tell them that you care about them and their career. With an enhanced skill set, they’ll feel more confident navigating uncertain times. They’ll also feel more loyal to your organization. This development can also uncover and nurture your employees’ passion. As they learn by creating and doing, they’ll realize their potential and find new ways to help your organization achieve its goals. It’s a real win-win. According to Gallup’s meta-analysis titled “How Employee Engagement Drives Growth,” the business or work units that scored the highest on employee engagement showed 21% higher profitability than units in the lowest quartile. F or best results, provide each employee with various developmental experiences tailored to their emerging skills and interests. Let them interact with other passionate team members across the organization to spread enthusiasm and innovation. And most importantly, give them ample space to experiment and implement what they learn.
Final Thoughts
Passionate employees can achieve great feats for your organization. But, they must be empowered to create, innovate, and take risks. When they are, you’ll retain valuable human capital, and your company will take giant leaps forward -- both necessities in today’s ever-competitive business world.
Source: https://www.omniagroup.com/how-to-unleash-your-employees-passion-while-strengthening-your-organization/
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