Employee Engagement and Connection from David Zinger on Vimeo.

Yesterday David Zinger and I held a webinar on Employee Engagement and Connection.  You can see a recording of the webinar above and here is a link to the slides used during the webinar.

The webinar was hosted by the Employee Engagement Network, a 3,500 member online community founded by David.  It was my good fortune to be the first speaker for the Employee Engagement Network’s inaugural webinar! If you are not a member of the Employee Engagement network already, I want to encourage you to join.  David will be the host for future webinars on employee engagement-related topics that you will not want to miss.

Jason Pankau and I will present a webinar today on employee engagement and alignment.   The webinar is for the New Talent Management Network. It will be held from Noon until 1:00 PM Eastern.  Additional details and sign up information are at this link. Webinar participants can access the free download of the digital copy of our book Fired Up or Burned Out by signing up for our newsletter at this link.

Jason Pankau and I spoke on a webinar for Linkage about maximizing employee engagement and alignment.  You can see the 60-minute webinar at this link.  You may also be interested in other free webinars offered by Linkage at this link.

Jason Pankau and I are speaking about maximizing employee engagement, alignment and productivity on several upcoming webinars. The webinars are based on ideas in our book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity (Thomas Nelson).

Here are the names of the organizations hosting the webinars along with the respectives dates and links to sign up:

December 7, 1:00 PM EST for Linkage

December 7, 3:00 PM EST for the Human Capital Institute sponsored by the ITAGroup

December 15, 12:00 PM EST for the New Talent Management Network

Employee engagement research this year produced several insights about serious problems we presently face in America.  Now this may sound bleak to some but for wise leaders and organizations it presents a huge opportunity. Below, I’ll explain.

In January, our friends at The Conference Board published a report entitled “I Can’t Get No … Job Satisfaction, That Is.”  The report’s subtitle, “America’s Unhappy Workers,” captured the essence of The Conference Board’s message. Consistent with the report’s tone, its cover featured a picture of an impending storm.  The report stated that job satisfaction and employee engagement had fallen to the lowest levels since The Conference Board began surveying more than 20 years ago. The report explained that the decline in employee satisfaction and employee engagement began long before the Great Recession and should therefore not be viewed as cyclical in nature. Looking forward, The Conference Board expressed concern about the impact of declining employee engagement on American competitiveness.

In July, Hewitt released a report showing that for the quarter ending June 2010, 46 percent of the 900 organizations it tracks experienced declines in employee engagement versus 30 percent of the organizations that experienced improved employee engagement.  Hewitt noted that this was the largest quarterly decline in employee engagement it has witnessed in the more than 15 years Hewitt has been researching employee engagement.

To finish off the bad news before shifting to the good, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in August, more Americans quit their jobs than lost them. Voluntary job quits have been steadily rising since late 2009 which is quite remarkable given the continued weakened state of the U.S. economy. Certainly some of these quits reflect employees moving to other jobs. It may also be the case, however, that the pain level of remaining at some organizations has become so high that more workers have decided to leave of their own accord in hopes of making it as entrepreneurs or finding jobs down the road as the economy recovers.

Finally, on a bright note, the Gallup Organization published research that established a causal link between employee engagement and favorable business outcomes.  Previously, Gallup and others had merely established correlation rather than the more difficult to establish link of causation. In addition to this important advance in the science of employee engagement, Gallup’s research continues to find that emotional connections are far more important than rational connections when it comes to engaging employees.  (You may remember Corporate Executive Board research found that emotional factors were 4X as effective as rational factors when it came to motivating employees to give their best efforts.)

In summary, America has a big problem related to employee engagement and it’s getting worse.  The solution, however, is clear: create Connection Cultures that motivate people to give their best efforts and align their behavior with organizational goals.  You can learn more by reading the Connection Culture Manifesto, our book Fired Up or Burned Out, or watching the video of  a presentation I gave about Connection Cultures at the Human Capital Institute’s Employee Engagement and Retention Conference held in Boston earlier this year.   Check out the video at this link.

Learn why U2, Apple, Pixar and other great teams and organizations thrive as Jason Pankau and I present a one-hour webinar on the force of connection and how it impacts employee engagement for Toolbox for HR on Oct. 21 and for individuals in Pacific time zones on Oct. 22.

The webinar will focus on the six universal human needs to thrive at work, the three elements of a Connection Culture that boost employee engagement and strategic alignment, and select best practices of great leaders who connect with and engage the individuals they lead.  You can sign up for the free webinar at the links below:

Oct. 21 from 12:00 PM until 1:00 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/980065897

Pacific Friendly Webinar on Oct. 22 at 6:30 AM Friday (Mumbai), 12:00 PM Friday (Sydney), or Oct. 21 from 9:00 PM until 10:00 PM EDT (U.S.): https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/128615569

Tomorrow I will be doing a podcast interview with Rena Reese on her Soul Salon program.  We will be talking about Connection Cultures, employee engagement, employee motivation and other ideas in Fired Up or Burned Out.  You can listen live and call in to participate at 1:00 PM Eastern.  Here’s the link.

We have podcasts and webcasts scheduled with organizations including Giant Impact (TBD), the New Talent Management Network (11/16) and the Corporate Executive Board’s Toolbox for HR (10/20).  Soon we expect to announce podcasts or webcasts with the Human Capital Institute and HSM.

Just to mention it, several articles on Connection Cultures were published are now available in online versions.

Outlook Business for Decision Makers (India) “Connect with Them”

The Economic Times (India) “Has SAS Institute’s Chairman Jim Goodnight Cracked the Code of Corporate Culture?”

Leader to Leader Journal (U.S.) “To Boost Performance, Connect with the Core.”

Hiring Smart (Canada) “The Case for Connection at Work“

On July 14, 2010 at 12:00 pm EDT, Michael and Jason Pankau will join the Best Practice Institute to present a 45 minute webinar on creating a work environment to maximize employee engagement and strategic alignment.   Following the webinar there will be a 15 minute period for Q&A.

During the session, Michael and Jason will cover:

• Six universal human needs to thrive at work
• Three core elements of a culture that motivates employees to give their all
• Best practices of leaders who energize the people they lead
• Why task and relationship excellence are necessary to achieve sustainable superior performance.

You can register for the webinar at this link.

Jason Pankau and I are presenting a 60 minute webinar for Communitelligence about the “Connection Edge” that leaders such as Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and A.G. Lafley employ to boost strategic alignment and employee engagement.  The webinar will be held on June 9 at 2:00 PM Eastern.  You can sign up at this link.

Jobs, Catmull and Lafley connect with employees of their respective organizations, although they do so in distinctly unique ways. This is the topic of a webinar Jason Pankau and I will be doing for Communitelligence. You can learn more about it at this link. This topic is relevant today because Corporate Executive Board research shows that 90 percent of employees are either not engaged and giving their best efforts or they are not aligned with their organization’s goals. Research by both The Conference Board and the Corporate Executive Board shows that the solution to this problem to develop the emotional and rational connections that employee have with their organization’s mission and values, supervisor, colleagues and day-to-day work tasks. In the webinar, Michael and Jason show how great leaders do this.