♥ Share this episode with someone you think will benefit from it. ♥

♥ Leave a review at Lovethepodcast.com/BusinessConfidential ♥

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Unlocking high performance and motivating high employee engagement isn’t easy.

What kind of people, practices, and management strategies actually work?

today’s guest, Alicia Parr, has some valuable tips and explains how.

What You’ll Discover About Employee Engagement:

* Why employee engagement is really about “people energy”

* How employee engagement becomes more challenging as businesses grow

* The four components that drive employee engagement

* The leadership mindset shift needed to unlock more employee engagement

* And much more

Guest: Alicia Parr 

Alicia is the innovative founder of Performentor, revolutionizing HR with 20 years of experience and a behavior science-based approach tailored for small businesses.

As a visionary, she excels in creating learning cultures, fostering a growth mindset, and guiding high-performing teams.

An accomplished executive coach, Alicia applies her deep knowledge in psychology, marketing, and mass communication to empower business leaders.

She developed a proprietary operating model, Unleash People Energy™, that reframes the definition of a business as the conversion of people energy into economic value.

With an enduring passion for understanding human performance and an impressive record as an endurance athlete, Alicia embodies the spirit of a disruptive leader, dedicated to shaping the future of human resource management.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Human Resources episodes.

Contact Alicia and connect with her on LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Also visit Performentor’s website, LinkedIn page and Twitter.

_____

How to Get Your Team Fired Up: Tips to Maximize Employee Engagement

Unlocking high performance and motivating high employee engagement isn’t easy. What kind of people, practices, and management strategies actually work? Well, today’s guest, Alicia Parr, has some valuable tips for you. Stay tuned.

This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, I have another fascinating guest for you today. She’s Alicia Parr.

Alicia helps businesses create learning cultures by fostering a growth mindset and guiding high performance teams. She does it as an accomplished executive coach and the innovative founder of Performentor, where she uses a behavior science-based approach that includes her deep knowledge of psychology, marketing, and mass communication to empower business leaders.

It’s a novel approach and I’m interested to learn more about it, so let’s have her join us now.

Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Alicia.

Hi, Hanna, thanks for having me.

Organizations are all over the board in their ability to motivate high employee engagement, and I’m curious to learn more about how you work with them. How do you determine where they are on this continuum of low, medium, or high engagement? In other words, how do you know what to focus on with them?

Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, anybody who runs their own business, they’re going to be the ones that really – at the same time they’re very close to it. So, sometimes it’s hard to know things that you’re so close to. But then it’s also so easy to see things in the color that they see them. But when I’m working with an organization, I really want to help them look at the people side and the engagement because that’s so important and really kind of reframe that a little bit.

I like to think about rather than talk so much about engagement, which we love to talk about, but I’d like to reframe it a little bit and talk about it as people energy. And one of the reasons why I like to do that is because it’s a different way of framing things, and it helps us just to pay attention to something a little bit differently than we tend to before, because we’ve been talking about engagement for at least 20 years now, [Laughter] Hanna, and we sometimes just need to think about things differently to really learn new things.

So, one thing that I like to do is just find out where in the business they’re having some real hiccups, where are things not moving smoothly, and then we can discover kind of where are the brakes, where are the things that are preventing us from being able to grow and to really unleash the capabilities of different people and their energy.

So, that’s definitely where we want to start with the customer, with the client, really looking at their whole business and not diving into any specific details right off the bat. And that keeps us really aligned with their mission, because that’s really what should be driving things.

When somebody reaches out to you, what have you found is the common reason? Because, I mean, I know that some leaders are like, “Oh no, we’re good. We’re fine.” They wouldn’t reach out to you. Where’s the pain point where somebody says, “Yeah, I think I need – I need an Alicia to help me here?”

People reach out – typically they’re growing, so things have changed. What worked before doesn’t work so well now. Sometimes maybe they’re having a bit more turnover and they’re just not sure why that is. Or maybe they just don’t have the time and energy to handle it anymore. And because we provide a whole suite of human resource services, very often in smaller organizations where we begin to work with them, different people are doing it.

It might be the CEO, it might be the CFO. And speaking as a CEO, after a certain point in time, you’re like, “Wow, I’m spread too thin. I really need somebody else to kind of help me solve these problems so I can focus in the areas where I can be using my energies and my time as a highest and best use for the business and for the mission.”

Well, that’s a common growth problem. I mean, I call it a problem, but in reality, it’s a benefit. I mean, it means that the business is doing something right in terms of having a product or service that a lot of people want. And so the demand is high. But of course, like you said, it stretches people thin. And then at some point, they need to reach out to supplement either by hiring or outsourcing certain services.

I’m wondering what tips you have for executives, managers, or entrepreneurs to motivate more employee engagement or unlock, as you put it, some of that people energy so that they get more value from the talent that they already have on the payroll?

Yeah. Well, when you look at a business, I like to say, “Hey, let’s think differently about what a business is.” What if we were to look at a business with all these people were taking their people energy, and we are converting that people energy into economic value in a sustainable way? And that’s just a very different way. And in order to engage and energize people, what are the things that you really need in the business to grow the people and to grow the business?

Well, heck, you need a really energizing mission and a purpose and be communicating it. You need to get people into roles that really tap into their talents and their loves and the things that energize them, and not too much of their day-to-day work is stuff that drains them. We also want to make sure that we have the right operational structures in place.

So, all those energies are harnessed, and people aren’t, I don’t know, beating their heads against the wall because they don’t have the tools and the resources that they need in order to do what it is that everybody wants them to get done. And also, people development, having a career path, having a sense of “I can move forward, I can learn new things, I can do new things.”

And these are really four main components that drive not just employee engagement, not just unleashing and harnessing people energy, but it helps the business itself grow. And the more the business grows, the more the mission can be put into practice. And that’s, I think, what we all want.

Absolutely. I’m wondering if you could give us an example of a success story, because what you’re saying here all makes tremendous sense. And some people may say, “Yeah, but that’s really high-level stuff. How do I implement that?” So, maybe if you could share a success story with us and granted, it may not cover all these bases and that’s fine, but at least it might illustrate how one or two of these things were surfacing, so that the employees could be made to shine and have more of that people energy and high employee engagement that everybody is craving.

Yeah. Actually, I’m thinking about a client in pest control. And when we first started working with them, they brought us in. They didn’t have any internal human resources. And so a couple of their – these key challenges were in two areas.

So the first area was recruiting. We started working with them at the beginning of the pandemic came along. And I don’t know if people know this, but pest control was a growth area with the pandemic because everyone’s at home and especially residential. They’re calling up their pest control companies a lot more. So, they were finding that couldn’t hire and keep. They just had a lot of turnover. It didn’t feel like they’re hiring the best people. That’s one of the reasons that they wanted to reach out and work with us.

And another item that kind of cropped up was that a lot of their managers, their regional managers, is just the CEO felt like, “I’m telling them these things, but they don’t believe me, or they don’t implement it.” And then what we started doing is we implemented manager coaching. So, one of my colleagues was able to be a sounding board for them. And so they had a lot more flexibility and openness to really think through these really difficult problems that they have without necessarily talking to their boss.

And over time, the CEO gets back to us and says, “I can’t believe it. Now, all of my team members who used to just sort of nod and listen and it sound like they agreed with what I was saying, but then they actually would do something entirely different.

Now they’re coming back to me going, “I have this great idea,” and these are all the ideas that I was trying to share with them before. So, he’s just so excited because sometimes, even if he can do it, sometimes he’s just not in the right seat. So, those are a couple situations where we started working with them. At first, they’re really anxious. They’re like, “I don’t know. We really want my managers – we don’t want my managers to be doing our own recruiting. I want them to feel like they got all the tools and the resources and the authority to do things.”

Well – so – but when we were able to take some of the tedious stuff off of their plates and just involve them in the parts where really, again, that highest and best use of their talents, things got so much better and so much so that he got very excited about human resources and then started hiring some of our team members in to help them grow.

And very often people think about human resources is just – it’s just a cost center. But when you think about growing a business by growing the people and by growing the people energy and figuring out how to harness it, then you discover that these kind of people practices and human resources are just the kind of thing that you need to help a business grow in the way that you want to grow it, which is a real mindset shift.

Yeah, I agree with you about the mindset shift, because some people, and even in large organizations that have significant human resource departments, too often folks seem to think that they’re nothing more than filling out a benefits form or making a worker’s comp claim or something along those lines when there’s really so much more than can be done, especially in the area of developing and professional growth. So, I’m curious though about the pest control company. Did their retention rates improve because you said they had high turnover?

Yes. Yeah. It got a lot better. More than anything, I would say the quality of hire got better and then the onboarding. So, the steps that they took to go from hiring to getting the person ready and trained up, all those things improved. I mean, turnover is still always a challenge in roles like this in the economy that we’ve had over the past several years.

But yeah, it improved tremendously. And it really unlocked his ability to think even more broadly about all the opportunities that on all the different ways that they can grow and expand their business, which they’ve done. They’ve even spun off, believe it or not, a whole marketing firm. So, at first when we started working with them, they didn’t have any marketing team except for the co-owners. And then we brought somebody in, and they grew.

And before you know it, they’re like, “We have such a high performing marketing team. We’re going to spin it off and it’s going to be its own entity.” And these sorts of opportunities, certainly, it’d be very hard to be able to do that kind of thing without real high quality HR support, without being really clear in setting the stage for very high engagement as well.

Well, I think you made a great point there about being very clear about the qualifications, the skill set and mindset of the people that you hire, so that you are bringing in the best talent for the role. And I think sometimes people just think, “Oh, you have a pulse, you can start Monday. Good. You’re in.” [Laughter] That kind of thing.

Well, that’s – yeah. Well, especially if you’re a manager and you’re just so busy because you’re understaffed. And that’s what would happen, kind of the proverbial fog, the glass, right? You’re hired.

And what actually decentralizing the recruitment and taking the front end of the process out of the manager’s plates that allowed them to focus on running and working with their existing teams while somebody else who’s really targeted, making sure that we’re finding and screening and just the people that are a great fit and look like the best fit for them so that they can choose from a smaller list of a higher quality level of candidates.

As they went through this process, there’s a lot of trying to define what makes for an optimal hire because you’ll find, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, there’s a lot of places where we have a lot of assumptions about what makes for a great hire. And then in this case, because a lot of their technicians also had to sell, they were knocking on people’s doors and stuff, they assumed that being very extroverted was actually an advantage.

And as they looked at the data, it turned out that indeed, it actually is not advantage. And in fact, some of their best people were a little bit more introverted, but they had other qualities that we were able to identify and define and really try and look for and help them get all that set up so that not just we can help them do it, but they could build a team internally that handled that themselves. And that’s something that we’re, real proud of being able to help them do.

And rightfully so, because you really helped them set up a better system. And I love that. A smaller list but higher quality candidates, that’s terrific. In your experience, Alicia, what have you seen to be the most common mistakes organizations make in the way they try to promote more employee engagement?

The example that you provided before, it almost seems like you coming in, your organization coming in as sort of this third party, gave more validity to the systems and the processes. It’s almost like the parent-child relationship. The parent says, “Oh, you’ve got to do X, Y, Z.” And the kid goes, “Eeh.” But then somebody else comes in and says the same thing and they’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s so smart.” Right?

Isn’t that funny? [Laughter] We all experienced this. Because I’m a mother too, so I know how that feels. [Laughter] Yeah, I mean sometimes it can really help that – to hear something from somebody else that – that’s, I guess, not your mom or your dad, just like you said and they’re coming in and they’re assuming all these people know something about HR so they must know something, so maybe they’re worth listening too.

So, we probably get a little bit of that. Of course, you’re always going to have a few folks that are going to be wary of anybody coming and talking to them about human resources, because I know our field doesn’t always have the best reputation. Which is too bad.

Well, and I think it’s like any profession, you’re going to have your practitioners that have high standards and then those that you just want to kick to the curb. [Laughter] So, don’t feel bad about that.

But let’s talk about these mistakes people make, because maybe somebody’s not quite ready to hire somebody with your caliber, or they’re not sure that they need it. And just if they can be honest with themselves to look in the mirror and say, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing that, and Alicia says that could be a problem.”

What are some of those mistakes that sometimes people don’t realize they’re making, but that just really dampen high performance or just keep that high energy locked up or crush it all together?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that sounds terrible. We don’t want to crush that high energy. So, one of the ways that things can get in disarray is this relates to something I call the trust algorithm. So, we want to do everything we can to make sure that what we’re accountable for. So, our roles, that’s the work that we have to do is in sync with what – where our talents lie, what we enjoy doing, and also all the tools and the resources that we need.

And so one common mistake is that just pulling somebody out, maybe from a different environment, a different size of an organization. I mean I see this. I work with a lot of small businesses, and they’ll get very excited and like, “Okay, we’re growing.”

“So, we want to hire somebody…” Let’s say marketing. “I want to have somebody in marketing.” And they hire somebody who was one person out of a 20 person team at a large corporation, and they think this is going to be great because this person’s got all this experience. They’ve worked in the big organization. They’ve seen all these things. They’re going to be great for us.

And they come in and this person is like, “Well, don’t you have this process? Don’t you have that? Don’t you have this? Don’t you have that?” Even though they said when you first talked to them, “This is going to be a lot looser. This is going to have a lot less structure to it than you’re comfortable with or familiar with.” And they’re going to be like, “That’s great.”

“I hate bureaucracy, I’m really looking forward to it.” But then the company hires them anyway, or a small business will hire somebody from a large corporate setting, and they find that there’s just the expectations are not in line, which is too bad. So, that is one common, common mistake that I have seen, and I’ve made myself.

I mean, the other thing is, yeah, they don’t provide the tools or the resources or maybe they set up incentives or bonus programs that we’re going to incentivize this department over here based on this variable, and we’re going to incentivize this department over here on this variable.

And later on, we find out that these two departments are at war with each other. And they’re like, “Why is that? We work for the same company. Why can’t we all get along?” Well, we need to maybe take a closer look at some of the – some of the incentives.

And so if somebody maybe in sales is incentivized by making as many high dollar sales as possible, and maybe your operational folks are incentivized by delivering a high quality with a high margin, there might be some activities on the sales side to optimize their numbers that might make it much, much harder for your operations side to optimize their numbers. And that can create a lot of friction and then friction is definitely not engagement. And it’s definitely not good people energy.

So, those are a few common things I’ve seen many times over.

That’s good to know about the aligning the incentives so that you’re not creating these little mini battles inside. But I especially like the idea of being aware of hiring a big gun and not giving them the right bullets, that – that’s just not going to go anywhere. [Laughter]

Good. Well said, I like that. I might borrow that later.

Yes. Please do. Please do. I understand in some of the materials that I’ve read about you that you have a program called Unleash People Energy Award, and that you give it to business leaders who demonstrate unconventional yet highly effective ways of instilling their company culture with people, practices and management strategies that create and sustain momentum and have that high energy, high employee engagement impact. And that sounds really great.

I was wondering if you could give us an example of one of these unconventional methods.

Yeah. Well, I’m actually were to described that, I was reflecting back on one of the more recent awardees. I came by and we had lunch with his – with the team and the CEO, even though they’re venture funded and venture funding over the past couple of years has been difficult to get. So, they’ve had some challenges that relate to that.

And even though they had to make some hard cuts and some tough decisions, the way that the CEO approached it was really just from the – how can I preserve the dignity of all the different people on my team? How can I do this in a way that sets them up for a good, positive future? How do I do this in a way that is considerate of the people who have invested money in this business? Because I have to consider them as well.

And he just really just did an outstanding job of really trying to balance all of these stakeholder needs, not just in his head, but in a way that everyone knew that he was doing that. And I’m just so just amazed and impressed. And I keep hearing about how wonderful he is to work with from my team members. And I just wanted to be sure to offer him that award.

And it’s just so wonderful seeing the award winners say, “Slide up,” and maybe even look a little embarrassed, and then seeing all of their teams supporting them and agreeing and saying, “You know what? This is completely legitimate. This is such a positive thing, and it just feels so good to play a role.” And really kind of unleashing and harnessing that their team’s energy for that CEO and that’s the kind of energy and vibe that we’re really looking to accomplish with the Unleash People Energy Awards.

Terrific. I think everybody wants to be able to unleash high energy. They may not always be adept at doing it. So, I think it’s wonderful that there’s folks like you that can help them achieve that goal.

So, thank you so much, Alicia, for sharing your experience and tips on how to improve high employee engagement and how to get to high employee engagement. I really appreciate your time and insights.

If you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Alicia Parr and her firm, Performentor, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview can be found in the show notes at businessconfidentialradio.com.

I appreciate your listening. Thank you. Be sure to tell your friends about the show and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode of Business Confidential Now.

So, until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.

Join, Rate and Review:

Rating and reviewing the show helps us grow our audience and allows us to bring you more of the rich information you need to succeed from our high powered guests. Leave a review at Lovethepodcast.com/BusinessConfidential.

Joining the Business Confidential Now family is easy and lets you have instant access to the latest tactics, strategies and tips to make your business more successful.

Follow on your favorite podcast app here as well as on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Download ♥ Follow ♥ Listen ♥ Learn ♥ Share ♥ Review ♥ Comment ♥ Enjoy

Disclosure:

This post may contain links to products to products on Amazon.com with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive commissions or bonuses from your actions on such links, AT NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU.