The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Have you ever participated in a trust building exercise?  They have been the craze for years.  There have been a few fun ones, like Escape Rooms, but there have also been a few you wish to forget, like “trust fall.” Seriously, who enjoys blindly falling backwards hoping someone will catch us?!   

Team building exercises are a great way to form relationships and build reciprocity. But developing trust takes time—much longer than one afternoon—and activities alone are not how a foundation of trust is established. Building an effective team starts by asking thoughtful questions. Those questions spark conversation, providing team members an opportunity to share bits of information about themselves, and over time, leading to more trust and engagement—improving team productivity along the way.

Highly engaged employees describe their company as authentic because they are who they say they are. They live their core values, rewarding those who demonstrate them and not tolerating those who don’t.  

It’s no secret that when your employees are engaged, they are emotionally committed and willing to give their best at work. That’s because engaged employees feel as though they have a stake in the game and a sense of purpose which makes them willing to give it everything they’ve got to achieve success. Employee engagement has a major impact on business success, proving to reduce turnover, increase performance, and retain key customers. 

Equipped with hotspots and Wi-Fi, laptops, and mobile phones, most professionals can now do their jobs from anywhere. However, the physical distance between remote workers quickly leads to loneliness and isolation for those not accustomed to the lifestyle. And, when employees feel left out, their comfort levels decrease when it comes to working with their team.

“Those organizations that will thrive right now are the ones that really, truly, care about their people — and show it every day, even when they can’t be in the office together,” explains Beth Sunshine, Partner at Up Your Culture.

Virtual team building is essential for helping your team feel like they’re part of a community while working from home. It’s the ongoing process of bringing your remote teams together to help them connect and provide more human interaction. As employee engagement and happiness increase, so does performance, communication, and retention. Below are five activities that can bring more human interaction to virtual work.

Researchers have learned that companies with the highest levels of engagement have four things in common: Shared Mission, People Development, Valued Voice, and Earned Trust. When a company commits to improving in these areas, they simultaneously lift—or elevate—their levels of employee engagement.  

When your people are engaged, they fully activate their talents and give their very best. Consistent employee engagement leads to increased revenue, employee retention, and customer success. In previous posts, we discussed two Engagement Elevators, Shared Mission and People Development. This post digs into the power of Valued Voice.

The first Engagement Elevator, Shared Mission, taught us that organizations with highly engaged employees have a clear sense of where they’re going as a company and why. Leaders communicate their purpose and vision well enough, and with enough frequency, that each employee, in turn, can clearly articulate the details with others.  

The second Engagement Elevator, People Development, focuses on how managers can show that they care about their people, build individualized relationships, transparently share information, coach both strengths and weaknesses, and provide meaningful feedback.  Are you investing in your people?

As 2020 unfolds, we see that Glassdoor’s prediction of a culture-first decade is upon us. Company culture and employee engagement are differentiators for organizations. This rise in popularity is largely due to a long string of well-respected experts, with studies in hand, pointing to a solid link between employee engagement and company productivity, revenue, and key customer retention. More than ever before, leaders understand that to grow the bottom line, they must start by creating a culture of engagement.

According to the most recent Gallup State of the Global Workplace, 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. The numbers don’t lie; this kind of disengagement has a tremendous negative impact on overall company performance and employee retention.

Employee engagement is important to every sales organization because it has a major impact on business success. The data confirms what many expert talent managers, coaches, and leaders have known all along—unengaged employees who see little or no overall purpose in their work aren’t as productive and are more likely to jump ship.

From profitability and revenues to client experience and talent acquisition, employee engagement affects your entire organization. Offering competitive pay and benefits are essential to attracting and retaining quality employees. Still, employers often struggle to find additional low-cost, creative ways to appeal to employees throughout the year.

According to our Media Sales Report, 40% of salespeople don’t feel as though they’re always being supported by their sales manager, and 46% of salespeople don’t feel as though they’re always valued.

While there are several simple and inexpensive ways to increase employee engagement, there’s one way that will also address these critical issues.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we addressed the overall power of employee engagement. In part two, we learned how transparency could be used to boost overall employee engagement. In a nutshell, workplace transparency helps set the stage for employee engagement — the essential element of a positive and productive workplace cult

In this final part of the blog series of how to improve your company culture in 90 days or less, you’re going to learn how to take your employees from feeling motivated about your company culture vision to acting on ideas that will increase employee engagement.

In part one of this three-part blog series, we addressed the overall power of employee engagement. Engaged employees mean a reduction in regrettable turnover, increased productivity, and an increase in key customer retention. 

In part two of this series, we’re incorporating transparency as a way to boost overall employee engagement. When done well, transparency creates trust between employers and employees, helps improve morale and lower job-related stress, and therefore increases employee engagement, boosting performance. An added bonus — being transparent is absolutely free, which gives it a notable ROI.