Hey, this is Chris with Hacking Your Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement. I'm gonna be going over an article from Forbes called the New Rules for Increasing Engagement at Work by a PhD named Tracy Brower. Uh. There's a lot of content in this in this article, and there's very specific rules that Tracy goes over on increasing employee engagement, and I don't want to go over them in the in the series of the next few Thursday episodes, so
we can you know, talk about them in the right way. Basically, what this comes down to is that we're at an all time low in terms of employee engagement for the you know, for the last at least decade. Younger people are experiencing higher levels of reported disengagement. People who work in remote work environments or hybrid work environments are also reporting the lowest level of engagement compared
to people who work in an office. Which is kind of a double edged sword there, right, because a lot of the people who work remotely don't want to come back to the office. And and we can talk about which came first, the chicken or the egg here where they do they want to be away from the office because they're disengaged or are they disengaged because they're away from the office, And the answer is yes on both. But I think this is really important to go over some of the things that are if you're
a leader, you have to think about. These are the rules for engaging your team. The first one I want to go over on this episode is around proximity. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean proximity means you have to be in the office. How Tracy puts it in the article is that proximity can be both literal and figurative. And so you have proximity to the person you sit next to regularly when you're in the office, but you also have a
sense of proximity with a colleague you're on video calls with regularly. We have a cognitive bias towards familiarity and recency, and so the people who you are most familiar with and the people who you have a lot of interactions with, those are the people that you will look to as you know, maybe the ones that are most in line for a promotion or you know your go to people for you know, projects that need you know, a project manager like
these are the things that are that need to be important to you is making sure that you have recency and proximity with your direct boss and your team, even if you're in a remote or hybrid environment. This is all incredibly important if you want your people to feel engaged. Yeah, we think about engagement
completely. I immediately think of that aspect of it, like how close are you with your peers and how genuine a relationship do you have with like your leader, And to your point, like that can be the informalities of the conversations and relationships that you have when you work together in the same offices and you know you kind of like take breaks together, have lunches together, whatever,
just hang out and just be able to be around each other. But then when it comes to some of the the hybrid or the remote work stuff, the intention of having that time together where it's not just dedicated to just here's the update, here's the job we're we at with this thing, but actually having conversations to connect with people about them, about their lives, about you know, their their you know, their goals, things like that.
Like having really kind of specific time that allows the informality, even if it's over the internet, I think is super duper helpful in building their relationships that then create the engagement because then again it's like I I've had this happen to me now where I've seen people and I'm like, wow, Like the last time I actually was like a physically near you was three years ago, four years ago. Now, it it crosses my mind because I'm like, but I like, I talk to you all the time, you know what I
mean, Like, like I see you all the time. So it kind of feels like nothing's changed in that, like we're we're we're we're close, and we're always talking. But there's the reality of the physical space thing that I think still a lot of people are working through right now. Right, I'll give a perfect example of this. You and I. So I like the last time we were in the same room together was in June of twenty one when I when we came out and visited and went to Today's for a
few days. So that was almost three years ago. And then before that, the last time we were in the same room together was probably four or five years before that because you didn't have kids yet, right, But yet we are on a video call several times a month, recording episodes for the for the podcast. We have conversations via text message daily. You know, like there is no if you were in the same room as me right now, it wouldn't be like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen you as
like I feel like I see you more than my own family sometimes. So so yeah, this is what it comes down to. Proximity doesn't necessarily mean you are in the same room with the person. It means that there is a sense of proximity. You feel like there's proximity there. I want to go over some of the things that I think good leaders do to make this happen with their teams, whether it's remote or hybrid or in office, But
first I want to give it a word from one of our sponsors. All Right, if you're a leader and you're trying to increase the sense of proximity of your team, whether you are in office or remote or hybrid, it doesn't matter. Just how you execute might be different depending on the situation for
your particular team, but it's important. And there are teams who work in office five days a week who don't have a strong sense of proximity with each other, and there are teams who work remotely who do have a strong sense of proximity with each other. And so it's all about what you do as a leader to make that happen, not necessarily about allowing the geography to be
the thing that says I'm doing this well or I can't do this. The leaders who do this well they set really clear guidelines about when their people should meet. And that's whether it's in a video call or in the office, or you know, when they should be on the same Slack channel together. What the core hours of work are. You know, some teams that work remotely, they might work over multiple time zones, they might be in different countries, and that might be harder to do, but they I bet you
they all still get together every once in a while. They all still have time where they do get together, even if it's only weekly or monthly. They do work as a team. They are accessible during specific core hours. And so if your team works remotely and you are in the same time zone or or maybe spread across you know, a small set of time zones, then you can set core hours like it's it's okay if you want to work remote, it's okay if you want to you know, have an extended vacation
as long as you're working at the same time. These are the core hours where we expect you to be available, meaning if someone sends you an email that you're expected to get back to them the same day and not you know, the next day or two days later. If someone sends you a message on Slack, you're expected to be able to respond or to see that message
go off. It's kind of these these core hours. If there are video calls, you're expected to turn your camera on to be able to see the people that you're talking to and not just have it be a you know, the blank avatar screen. These are the things that increase the feeling of connectedness
between people on a team. And when a person on your team is reluctant to do some of these things, it shows that they are already actively disengaged, and it's on it's incumbent upon you as a leader to talk to those people individually and to find out why they're actively disengaged in what you can do to help, but to also set the expectation that this is this is how we increase the level of engagement. And it's like it's like going to the
gym again when you haven't for years. It's it's it's gonna be painful at first, right. It's the people who are actively disengaged. They don't want to do these things, but doing these things will increase the level of engagement if they're if they come from a good standpoint from you as a leader, not from you better, but from we really want you here, We want to engage with you, and it's important that we feel that way as a team. So I need you to be on, I need you to be
here during these times. You know, talk to your people about this and make sure that they feel supported in that, because that will increase the feeling of proximity. Yeah. And I think too that there's the elements like what you're talking about, which is like just kind of almost blatant disengagement, like like the bare minimum of just being like doing the things that would allow you
to be able to even potentially connect with people in a certain way. I also think that if if you're really trying to consider how do you build on and create a better level of engagement, it's thinking about the systems and processes that are already there that may not be allowing the creation of the space or the ability to connect and engage with a team that is not specific to work. It's not specific to you know, to getting you know, to meeting
a deadline or working on a project. Like I immediately think of, like, well, why can't you you know, host a trivia night you know, once a month and and have people on it. And again, like it sounds crazy, but if you're going to have them, you know, if you're looking at increase engagement, you kind of have to pay them to
do it as well. Like it's one thing to say we're going to increase engagement by having you volunteer your free time to hang out with us, Like, nobody wants to do that, right, People who are actively engaged don't want to do that exactly right. I want to spend time with who I want to spend my time with. Now, if you're looking to say, hey, we we want to do this to drive our own engagement amongst one
another, have some fun together, enjoy our time together. You know, Thursdays at four pm, you know, every other Thursday, we're gonna do some type of a you know, a virtual call where we're gonna have some fun and we're gonna have a good time and there's gonna be prizes and we're gonna do stuff like where it's gonna be enjoyable. Yes, you're on the clock, but like this is the this is the intention is for us to
get to know each other more. So that way when we have some of these other spaces and informal conversations, we have things to talk about and sellthbright as a team. Like That's what I would also say, is like challenge yourself to think about those types of spaces and even physically, like like within an office, it's the same type of thing, Like you gotta find ways to have some fun in the office and create the spaces for people to get
to know each other more and spend time together. Yeah, I think you're spot on with that. I think the other thing that you have a responsibility to do as a leader is you have to give people work that requires collaboration. It doesn't necessarily have to be with the entire team. It could just
be two people or three people. But if the work that you give your individual team members is solely work that they can get done on their own, then there won't be this need to collaborate and to get together, and they will find themselves unintentionally but eventually getting to a place where they don't feel connected to their teams. If the work that you're assigning them, the work they're required to do, really requires collaboration with other people, then they'll collaborate.
It is what it is that there's no way to get the work done without that. And so even if it means collaboration via email or video calls or Slack channel chats or whatever it is, if people have to engage to get their work done, then they will. And just the putting in the reps of that interaction with each other, that's going to increase the engagement and the
feeling of proximity between those people. Do that enough with enough people on your team, and you will, over time maintain that sex of that sense of proximity between people, and people will start feeling, you know, less disconnected. It's great to do you know, fun engagement. You know, nights and and and uh, you know, things that have nothing to do with work. I love that. That's that's fantastic. The core of the work needs to feel meaningful to them, and it needs to be work that they
can't get done without the help of their peers. If you really want to increase this engagement, I want to thank you all for joining us in this discussion on employe engagement. We'll see you all next Thursday. I have a great day.