Creating a Culture that Promotes and Rewards Employee Engagement – Part II

Connect employees' contributions to business results.
Business results are the large success outcomes leadership teams are committed to achieving with their organizations. They are the things that are most likely on the "dashboard" of the owner, chief executive, and investors, and also the way company achievements (e.g., revenue, client progress, parent/family satisfaction, employee engagement) are evaluated.

As described in part one, leaders clearly and explicitly express the company's priority business results in organizations with robust performance-based cultures. As a supervisor or team leader, you have to be aware of the most important outcomes that the organization is trying to achieve. Understanding the business results is how we determine the purpose of our work. As supervisors, we must answer the question, "Why do we want to develop, improve, or support this performance?" By understanding what the organization is trying to attain, you can help your employees draw a line of sight from what they are actively producing in their roles (e.g., up-to-date graphs, session notes, converted appointments) to the organizational-level business results. To promote employee engagement and increase productivity, employees must understand how their accomplishments contribute to the organization's overall success.

Set performance expectations focused on valuable accomplishments.
Instead of providing your employees with an abstract list of duties or vague descriptions of behavior, describe the accomplishments (work outputs) you expect them to produce in their role. Most of us don't naturally think about our behavior products, particularly the less tangible ones -- like relationships, decisions, or solutions. We think and talk more about behavior itself. Shift the focus to work outputs to recognize and increase the value that people deliver to the organization. Ultimately, the only way to connect people's behavior to the organization's overall success outcomes is to identify the work outputs that people produce with that behavior and the value that those work outputs contribute to business results.

However, merely identifying the valuable work outputs that each employee contributes to the business results is insufficient. It is also imperative to define the criteria (e.g., quality, quantity, cost, timeliness) for each work output, ensuring the requirements for a “good” one align with the organization's values. Be specific and succinct! A general, long, drawn-out list of criteria will frustrate employees and make it difficult to measure their performance. Possible actions you can take to help determine criteria for a "good" work output include:

• Observe exemplary performers,
• Identify the business results to which the work outputs must contribute,
• Consult with recipients of the work output (e.g., supervisors, parents/caregivers, payers, department heads), or
• Meet with the individuals working downstream in the process to understand better how they prefer to receive the output.

Plan and arrange conditions that support optimal performance.

We often hear outstanding directors and managers say to the people that report to them, "You don't work for me. I work for you!" These leaders and supervisors may use different words or terms to describe their rationale for said statement. Still, fundamentally, they understand that in their roles, they are responsible for producing positive behavior influences (i.e., variables or influences that affect behavior) to develop and support others' performance.

In our own companies and our work with client organizations, we teach leaders and supervisors to use the Six Boxes® Model to analyze, develop, improve, and support individual and team performance. The Six Boxes® Model "is a comprehensive framework encompassing all factors or influences known from research and practice to influence human behavior" (Binder & Riha, 2016, p. 6).

Leaders and supervisors can use this model to analyze the current conditions affecting an individual or team's existing performance and then coordinate the best combination of positive behavior influences to optimize the workplace conditions maximizing productivity and engagement. Further, research on employee engagement conducted by the Gallup Organization using its Q12 survey aligns perfectly with behavior influences encompassed by the Six Boxes® Model (Gallup, 2016).

Using the Six Boxes® Model to guide collaborative conversations with direct reports enables leaders and supervisors to quickly learn what's working well and what factors obstruct or inhibit desired performance. Once armed with that information, they can more easily establish agreed-upon action steps or solutions for developing new or improving existing performance (Binder & Riha, 2016, p. 7). When collaborative discussions are regularly conducted to develop and support employees' ability to produce expected work outputs to criteria, supervisors become a valuable resource for their staff (i.e., supervisor support). Research indicates that this is positively correlated with lower burnout and turnover levels (Novack & Dixon, 2019; Plativeau et al., 2018).

Arrange career development opportunities.
Many people kickstart their careers in this field as behavior technicians. And many behavior technicians have career ambitions beyond delivering behavior analysis services under the direction and close supervision of a qualified supervisor. Suppose your organization has established an internal talent development program (see part one of this series), and you've set performance expectations focused on work outputs. In that case, we recommend you collaborate with your direct reports to identify and arrange career development opportunities within the company.

Similar to how connecting people's contributions to business results increase "buy-in," which is pivotal for promoting engagement, establishing a clear path for advancement helps employees understand how they can achieve their desired career goals. Developing people for expansion, promotion, and other career goals is an effective strategy for sustaining high employee engagement and retention. To outline a career path for employees in your organization, try the following set of tactics.

• Make the descriptions and measures of expected work outputs public to employees and encourage their review.
• Tie measures of performance to roles (e.g., entry-level and advanced BT roles) and make the criteria for advancement public.
• Use your regular coaching check-ins to learn about your direct reports' career goals; help them connect those goals to specific opportunities and initiatives within your organization.
• Encourage employees to pursue higher-level positions within the company and inform them of internal processes/systems designed to support career development.
• Arrange conditions that promote and reward performance development (e.g., incentives for participating in professional development activities).
• Find ways to promote and reward managers for expanding their team's capability as it can be aversive for managers to "lose" a top performer to a new position.