Employee Engagement Resolutions Every Organization Can Stick To:

We've turned the corner and are now starting off 2017 with a bang! New ideas! New goals! Living in the fantasy-world of the resolution, determined to make those changes that have been niggling at the back of our minds over the past year.

CustomInsight thought it would be fun to give your organization a resolution list, one that will inevitably boost employee engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction. A resolution list your organization can stick to:

1. Don’t make resolutions.

There. That was easy.

As we mentioned, resolutions are fantasies. They’re fun. They’re usually lofty and not precise. And approximately 8% of people stick to their resolutions. As an organization, making resolutions gives you a 90% shot of failure. The odds are worse than playing craps blindfolded in Vegas.

Instead of making resolutions, organizations, upper management, and employees need to frame these ideas and plans into decisions.

What’s the difference between a resolution and decision ? The first requires literally no work up front. It’s a dream. And then it takes insane willpower to follow through, whereas the latter is a conscientious choice to compromise, negotiate, and put forth a discretionary effort to affect change.

Decision-driven changes must be actionable and, we recommend, based on an employee engagement survey. If not, a more informal pulsing survey or checking-in of employees will do. This will establish your baseline for decision-making in the organization.

1. Identify goals your organization (upper management, employees etc.) wants to meet.

2. All of these goals will have obstacles. Or else, what’s the fun, right? So, write down what’s getting in the way of reaching these goals. These challenges will be based on the results of the employee engagement survey or employee interviews (eg. Lack of technology. Micromanaging employeesetc.)

3. Make decisions, using this HBR checklist. (Decisions will have butterfly effects in the organization and need to be thought through: Assemble a team. How will this decision impact pre-existing company goals? What are alternatives to this decision? What information are you missing? In one year, how will this decision change things? Write down the decision.)

4. Once you write down the decision, write the action plan and timeline.

5. Reconvene with the decision-making team and assess changes that are happening. Adjust according to needs that arise with these changes.

Change is happening. Decisions are being made, addressing problems, moving toward a better organization. What was once a lofty goal now has a path. Small changes can snowball into big changes. And resolutions are blown away by something much stronger and concrete: a decision to change.

Happy 2017. We’ve got a lot of incredible information in store for you and your organization in the upcoming year. We look forward to seeing you here.