Influencing Employee Engagement
Pause for a few seconds and imagine a workplace culture so amazing that your employees and volunteers come to work each day with their figurative tanks filled to the top with energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and passion for their job. With that level of engagement, what might they accomplish individually and collectively each day for God’s kingdom?
As a Christian leader, wouldn’t it be amazing to know how to influence and motivate your staff to be that productive and fulfilled? Thankfully, research in the Christian sphere exists that shows clearly what you can do to have the greatest influence on the engagement and well-being of your people.
How well do Christian-led workplaces influence staff engagement?
Christian-led workplaces often demonstrate higher levels of engagement...
In the “State of the Christian Workplace 2024 Report,” 58% of employees in Christian-led organizations were found to be engaged in their work. This means the workplace culture influenced their staff to have the energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and passion to perform well. In contrast, Gallup’s research across general workplaces in the first quarter of 2024 showed that only 30% of employees were engaged. Thus, Christian-led workplaces often demonstrate higher levels of engagement and effectiveness compared to typical workplaces.
High performers can be up to four times more productive than the average person. That means the prevalence of healthy, engaged Christian workplaces is something to be celebrated. However, it is also essential to continually evaluate and improve these workplaces. The culture created by Christian leaders in the workplace, whether healthy or not, significantly impacts people’s perception of Christianity.
Factors that influence performance
Best Christian Workplaces’ research identifies “Eight Drivers of a Flourishing Culture.” These cultural drivers represent the keys to influencing employee engagement and performance. They are explored in our book Road to Flourishing (IVP, April 2022) and include Fantastic Teams, Life-Giving Work, Outstanding Talent, Uplifting Growth, Rewarding Compensation, Inspirational Leadership, Sustainable Strategy, and Healthy Communication. The degree to which you and your organization’s leaders create an environment that demonstrates and supports those eight keys is the degree to which you are influencing your staff, your teams, and your organization on the road to flourishing.
The “Road to Flourishing”
What does it mean to flourish?
God’s desire is for his Creation to flourish. When he first created the world, he said it was “very good.” Psalm 92:13 tells us, “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.” What does it mean to flourish? Biblical flourishing encompasses all our being, including our psychological, spiritual, and emotional aspects. Throughout the Bible, there are references to God’s desire for us to grow, prosper, expand, multiply, and bear fruit. Those are examples of what it looks like when we are flourishing in God. However, flourishing is not static. It is something that we must proactively give attention and effort to over time. As leaders, we have the power to influence our people and our organizations on their unique road to flourishing.
The “road to flourishing” is a metaphor. It describes the never-ending path that people, teams, and organizations follow to flourish in achieving their God-given mission and vision. Being on a “road” suggests that organizations are on a journey to health. The destination of “flourishing” is a state of existence that can be achieved over time. However, it can also be quickly diverted from and lost.
Imagine leaders guiding their organization through a beautiful, fruitful land. Most leaders don’t begin their journey in a flourishing place. Even once they arrive, the situation can change rapidly. Metaphorical weather shifts. Obstacles like rocks, flat tires, and floods may occasionally block the path or slow progress. Sometimes, the road itself changes, leading to new pastures that could be better or worse.
Driving With Influence: A 3-pronged approach
Leaders who are the most successful in creating and influencing a healthy workplace culture are the ones who understand that their organization is indeed on a journey that must be monitored and responded to over time. In this analogy, your organization is a vehicle that is driving along a road. The quality and capability of your vehicle represent the workplace culture you’ve created. The road you’re journeying on symbolizes the internal and external environment and challenges that you face along the way.
So, what does it look like to drive with influence on the road to flourishing? There are several things that leaders can do to keep their organizations on a journey that supports a productive, engaged workforce. At Best Christian Workplaces we recommend a 3-pronged approach that we refer to as: Discover, Build, and Grow.
Let’s quickly break down each of those elements and describe how you can use them to significantly influence engagement and drive results.
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Discover
The word “discover” suggests the active process of becoming more aware of the world around you. Discovering means seeing, learning about, finding, or gaining insight into something. To influence an organization, leaders must “discover” or learn about the state of their workplace culture and employee well-being. What’s going well and what’s not?
What’s going well and what’s not?
Leaders need to proactively collect data about their workplace culture to discover and understand how their employees are experiencing the organization. This data should be collected through anonymous feedback from all staff in the form of a comprehensive employee engagement survey such as ours.
Discovering and understanding your organizational culture through employee feedback is the starting point of influencing workplace health. The more thorough and specific that data is, the better. For example, Best Christian Workplaces’ engagement survey provides data on over 50-plus items related to workplace culture, summarized across eight drivers of engagement, while also providing feedback about how various demographic groups are experiencing the organization. Thus, you can discover overall strengths and weaknesses in the organization, as well as across teams, roles, genders, ages, tenures, ethnicities, and more.
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Build
Once you understand precisely where your culture is strong and weak, you’re ready to build a plan with agreed-upon goals and actions to remain healthy or get healthier. To see success and growth, it is imperative that the senior leadership team champions the overall planning efforts. There are often aspects of the plan that senior leaders must communicate and act on. There are other aspects of the plan that a Human Resources person or team may lead. It’s wise to invite each team or department to take a level of ownership over the plans and actions their group can take to influence workplace culture in their respective areas. Utilizing a seasoned employee engagement consultant to evaluate your survey results will provide you with clear recommendations and advice to develop action plans at each level of the organization.
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Grow
The last, critical step in this 3-pronged approach is to follow through with your committed actions. While this may sound obvious, taking necessary action often proves to be challenging. Engagement goals must be well-defined, realistic, achievable, time-bound, and include clear roles and responsibilities. You’ll also want to establish a rhythm of reviewing the status of those goals throughout the year to ensure that progress is being made.
Final Thoughts on Becoming (and Remaining) Flourishing
No one has greater influence on organizational culture and performance than the senior leaders of an organization. You now have the keys to culture building in your pocket. Join a growing number of Christian leaders who have decided to make organizational culture one of the pillars of their annual strategic plan.
Follow the 3-pronged approach to discover your workplace culture through an employee engagement survey, build an engagement action plan, and watch your workplace grow and flourish as you follow through on your plans. Make surveying a part of your annual rhythm and you’ll be on your way to creating and maintaining a healthy workplace culture that drives kingdom impact and honors God.
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Jay Bransford is the President and CEO of Best Christian Workplaces. He is a consultant of 30 years who is passionate about equipping and inspiring Christian leaders to create engaged, flourishing workplaces. Jay spent a large portion of his career as a human performance consultant serving numerous Fortune 500 companies before serving as a missionary in Asia.
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