Helping People with Engagement
- Kathy Ratcliffe
- Mar 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 19
The shop floor can be a harsh place, fraught with fire-fights and repetitive issues. For someone working there, it can be pretty stressful, but hey, a job is a job - they say you're lucky to have one. Is the engineering sector's dearth of experienced talent based on historic assumptions? After all, good people will always be hard to find.
Everyone without exception wants to be proud of their brand. They want to look up at the logo and feel part of something special, something worth fighting for. Bringing home a pay cheque is part of the process, and carries an unfortunate consequence - a tendency towards hierarchal perks and workplace subjugation.
People don't leave on lack of a pay rise nearly as often as they do when they're not treated well. Priorities (in session work) list Communication, Morale and Recognition, usually in that order. What comes out of the woodwork is the knowledge that power to transform is in everyone's hands; methodology matters, in the long run, to them all.
Here's a brilliantly insightful article from Psyche about two key needs we could be missing out on...
Exploration of the self being essential to engagement, we have to see our own perspective as being singular - to do that, we must accept that we cannot see ourselves! Seeing that we only hold one vision among multiple versions assessing the same situation gives us an opportunity to make life easier by working together, instead of wasting time blaming each other for things that go wrong.
Friendship, some say, has no place in the workplace but people are people and will act as such. The more trust has a chance to flow, the more everyone gets from the working day... living under the shadow of a harsh, dictatorial agenda drives people to look for greener pastures (and everyone in truth would rather avoid that).
Helping people gain trust involves a lot of transparency. Be prepared for well-worn ground to break en route to the dynamic your company wants to set up, as you give rein to those whose trust is needed to bring about radical change.
We need new thinking to permeate the industrial sector if we're to see Engagement gaining a foothold and strengthening the economy. More value is placed now on cultural health than on wage criteria, a trend set to accelerate as Quality of Life continues to overtake fiscal considerations in social prioritisation. In 2019, Glassdoor commissioned a survey revealing that 56% of employees valued culture over pay - more on that here;
That was six years ago - and we are increasingly adamant that how we treat each other, our planet and environment matters more than ever before. Think on the impact to your business and how you can position your company in line with these aspirations.
The emphasis on cultural welfare hinges largely on an increasing desire to see others treated fairly in addition to feeling psychologically safe in the workplace - criteria not even on the table during the Industrial Revolution. Traditional management styles nevertheless hark back to that era when people did as they were told and were considered lucky to be in employment at all. For many, the pre-generational consequences prove disastrous as workplace corridors echo with "nothing's going to change around here" and good people are lost to the darknesses of blame, resentment and silo mentality.
You may be keen on finding solutions to these epigenetic problems, longing to break free of old paradigms that consistently fail to deliver good results. Get in touch today for free resources, updates on innovative moves to empower the industrial sector, and help with your personal circumstance (we never charge for chats). Success is about you, your people, the synergy you experience and cohesion of your mission. Let's leave ancient history behind and light the way to a new way of working that really works!
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