What will I Write on the Next Company Engagement Surveys

Company Engagement Survey

What will I Write on the Next Company Engagement Surveys

Companies are doing their best to keep employees engaged and increase worker productivity. But keeping the balance is difficult, as issues in salaries and comfortability within the workplace are varying, and an employee can suffer these issues at any stage of their career working. 

While taking care of my son, I somehow had enlightenment on what management should promote to keep corporate workers as happy employees.

Babies maintain a high level of energy in doing repetitive tasks over and over again. If you’re a parent like me, you must have experienced that moment when your son is so happy opening and closing your kitchen drawer for over a hundred times.

And these levels of energy from babies are attributed to two human qualities. Babies have ignorance and curiosity. And these should be maintained by management on their employees to increase worker productivity. These two human qualities keep babies needing and wanting to know more.

You cannot mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best. — Steve Jobs

The word ignorance may have a negative ring, but all acquired knowledge of someone who is perceived to have a high level of intelligence began from ignorance. Ignorance, together with the ability of self-awareness, can lead to greatness. Ignorance and self-awareness allow us to understand what we need to know by first discovering what we do not know.

Companies should recreate that state of ignorance in their employees to keep them engaged in the direction of the company. Management should communicate what the future visions of the organization are — the plans and strategies of the organization during this highly competitive world. Company direction, future visions, and business plans and strategies provide a sense of security. That what they are working for is a growing organization. That there is a future in staying.

Curiosity is a human quality that is highly associated with learning. Curiosity is our careful observation of an object or situation. And the typical response of the brain is to ask how that object works or how that situation affects us. That initial response to creating the first question is the first step on the journey of learning.

The habit of learning should be promoted by management to keep employees wanting to learn. And to increase employee’s productivity. Management should provide a learning program that further develops employees skills. The investment in talent is as important as the investment of CAPEX technologies. Employees enrolled in a development program will feel that they are more valued. A development program is also the easiest way to keep the right talent inside the organization. And the money invested in training will result in a highly productive employee that can build a reliable organization.

But what if you work for a Poor Organization?

But the problem of many companies is they do not value the transparency of corporate information. They keep information only to the managers and supervisor levels. And the working force is kept in the dark on what is happening with the organization. This is a traditional bad practice, senior employees keeping information to hold a sense of authority. They keep information to avoid competition — a classic corporate bureaucracy.

A poor company also devalues the need to train their employees but expects them to perform at different levels. They expect someone who completed their formal education ten years ago, to provide optimum performance of a process that was thought to be important just recently. There is also another form of development inadequacy. The development program exists, but it is only available to selected numbers of the working rank. The training and sharpening the saw is not distributed equally.

There are healthy and poor organizations. And you are fortunate if you are working for a mature and growing company. It is not the case for most of us. It is hopeless to expect a good response from companies that consistently fall short in appreciating your value and neglects to provide you the best tools to contribute. Observing a baby can provide new insights into life, aside from knocking your head that you need to provide. The experience teaches that there is a need to learn and it also essential to maintain the passion of wanting to learn — ignorance and curiosity. The easiest way to increase motivation is to know where you are going. And the easiest way to maintain security in the corporate world is to train yourself to be resourceful. You are open to learning new relevant subjects and technologies if you maintain a healthy level of ignorance. The development of a habit of needing to learn makes learning easy. Keeping a high level of curiosity is also essential. It is your fuel in the process of learning. The development of a habit of wanting to learn is your drive to knowledge and improving your skill. The hours spent in reading and research will not be tedious if you have the journey on the need and want to learn.

We cannot expect encouragement and support from poor companies we are working for. But we can create our own personal goals, and we can invest in ourselves to improve our skills. Either on free or paid medium.

What I should write during the next Company Engagement Survey

What I should write during the next Company Engagement Survey

The next company engagement survey will be lengthy, and I do not expect that their response will be immediate. And rather wait for them to help me, I will help myself. 

Creating goals and learning ways to improve my skill will be more reliable.

Browse my portfolio of the things I need to learn and keep my drive of wanting to learn. This process is more productive and will open more opportunities, rather than constantly nagging behind the corporate desk