Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #898 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.
Gallup® reports that 44% employees worldwide say they are stressed. The stress levels increased during and after COVID19 and are still running high.
In Pakistan, stress may be more than the world level, but we do not admit it or recognize it. While in developed countries, stress has given rise to trends like ‘quiet quitting’ and ’bare minimum Mondays’, we don’t do any such thing due to scarce job market. The stress prevails all the same.
In its latest article (link at the end), Gallup has made recommendations on improving employee engagement. I must mention here that Gallup has done groundbreaking work on the concept of employee engagement and strengths. They have published articles and books on this topic which are among the bestsellers.
I shall take some learning from their January 2024 article, ‘2024 Employee Engagement Checklist, and present here.
‘Managers are the key’, is an often-repeated phrase, and rightly so. Managers are under greater stress, are more likely to be burned out and disengaged than their teams. In many cases, managers absorb most of the pressure to save their teams from burning out. To help employees cope with stress, following is recommended.
Listen to them
There is more talking in management than listening. The needs and issues of employees remain unheard and unresolved. The culture of not listening goes from top down and becomes a norm. It is extremely important to put in place a system where they are heard, and know they are being heard.
Improve leadership communication
Only 3 in 10 managers strongly agree that their supervisors keep them informed about what is going on within their organization. If this is the feeling of managers, then the other employees would be in a more uninformed situation. By providing straightforward, clear, and regular communication about organizational goals, policies, developments, changes, and related events, supervisors can communicate priorities more effectively to their direct reports and further down the chain of command.
Train and develop managers
Only 48% of managers strongly agree that they currently have the skills needed to be exceptional at their job. Organizations must teach managers to have meaningful conversations with their teams. They need more training on best practices in employee engagement and performance development. And they need more support when it comes to identifying their teams’ strengths and coaching them with those strengths in mind.
Truth is that most Pakistani managers are not trained at all. They learn management by copying their seniors, who were equally untrained. The harshness, brashness, rudeness, and arrogance displayed by most managers is a learned behavior which goes through generations of managers. There are few organizations which subscribe to modern concepts and practices of management, but we need many more to compete with the world.
Provide coaching support
Coaching support is important for managers to deal more effectively with emerging situations on the job. Things happen within the organization, in the marketplace, and in the teams. If supervisors wish to support their managers, they should spend more time with them, and coach them for their development and learning.
Create a community of shared values
The pharma industry of Pakistan history shows that a strong team having shared values was the key factor in making organizations successful and big. These teams worked hard, supported one another, created shared accountability, and took full responsibility of their assignments. Unfortunately, these teams were lost after the companies attained a rather large volume. It was partly natural attrition, and partly because the senior management became wary of their strength. Supervisors must intentionally build a community of managers that nurtures peer relationships and mentorship.
Establish the loop of feedback
The weakest link in our management chain is feedback, due to lack of frequency, quality, preciseness, and helpfulness. The feedback frequency is uncertain and irregular, and the employees keep waiting to hear from their managers/ supervisors. Quality of feedback is deficient as it is delivered poorly. Rather than giving complete picture, the feedback is more like dropping hints here and there, which is disturbing rather than helping. Preciseness is seriously missing; the employee does not understand what has been delivered, which areas are good, and which areas need improvement. Gallup shows that 80% of employees who say they have received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged.
Measure Engagement
Engagement surveys are needed to measure the level of engagement. The surveys should be run in a congenial environment considering that the employees have time to complete the surveys at ease. Long time back, Gallup designed a 12-questions survey to measure engagement, which I had also shared in my blogs. Of course, it would have evolved further with time. Companies can seek help from professional organizations to design surveys which will be more relevant and specific for them. Engagement survey may preferably be done once a year.
Take action on survey results
An engagement survey is the starting point, not the ending point, of motivating employees. The results gathered from the survey must be analyzed with open mind, accepted, and acted upon. If these actions are not taken visibly, it could cause more harm than good. Iff you ask an employee for feedback about workplace and/or engagement and then do nothing about it, resentment quickly rises.
Understandably, this part is quite difficult for us, given our tendency to run the things in our own manner, and with our own thinking. It is quite likely that the survey results are rejected as mutiny and some managers may even lose their jobs. If this is the environment, then the engagement survey must not be conducted.
If the intention is to improve continuously, then engagement surveys are a great tool to promote engagement, take everyone on board, and work together towards sustainable improvement.
Sum Up
Strategies discussed above are not entirely new, however, as the new year starts, there is a feeling at all levels that things shall change for better. Year 2024 is a good place to start the process. I would go a step further and suggest that 2024 be declared as the ‘Year for Engagement’. I hope it will not culminate in the other kind of ‘engagements’.
Concluded.
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