Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next installment of the 2025 Deer Oaks AllOne Health Leadership Certificate Webinar series. I'm Greg Brannan from AllOne Health. Good to be with you today. Today's topic, of course, is creating a culture of improved employee engagement. And so this is the second topic in this year's quarterly series.

Back in February, just to catch you up, we presented how to hire the right employees. Today, of course, we're doing creating a culture of improved employee engagement. If you need a copy of the first session, how to hire the right employees, all you have to do is hit reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and request and our staff will send you the recording link.

For those of you that are not familiar with this series, I think the 11th year we've run this Leadership Certificate Series. Something like that is if you attend all four quarterly sessions, all four quarterly topics either in person like today or by viewing the recording link, we can track that as well. You will qualify at the end of 2025 to receive your Deer Oaks AllOne Health Leadership Certificate.

And so again, if you miss the first one, how to hire the right employees and you still want to qualify for the certificate by the end of this year, please hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and just request. Our staff to send you the recording link for how to hire the right employees, which was presented in February.

Now, if you haven't had a chance to register for the remaining two sessions in August on the 25, we're going to present how to motivate a multigenerational work team. And then on in November, we'll be presenting advanced coaching skills for leaders.

If you were not able to register for either of those sessions, you can also reach out to our staff, again, by hitting reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and ask our staff to send you the registration link for, again, either the August how to motivate a multigenerational work team session or the November advanced coaching skills for leaders session. Thank you, folks. Let's go ahead and get started.

But before we launch today's topic, I would like to just make sure that our technology is working for us. If you can locate the Raise Hand icon, you'll find that in the GoToWebinar navigational bar on your screen. And if you can, you can see the screen clearly and the slides and you can hear my voice clearly. If you could please click on the Raise Hand icon, that'll let me know that we are good to go technology-wise.

All right, folks, thank you. Looks like we are good to go technology-wise. Let's go ahead and get started, folks. All right, so we're talking about creating a culture of improved employee engagement.

I know many of you will probably be in leadership positions for your respective organization. Some of you may not be. It's OK. There's the content will be helpful to people that are either looking to maybe get into a leadership position at some point or if you're already in a leadership position, you want to just enhance your leadership capabilities or if you're just interested in the topic of employee engagement.

Most of you are probably familiar that when someone when an employee comes to work and is 100% committed to doing their best work there, they are all in. They are engaged. They are motivated. Working with employees like that, those employees tend to be the most energetic, the most productive. And it's wonderful.

As a leader, I've been in a leadership role now for about 30 years all told. When I've had engaged employees in the past, it's been a wonderful experience. And if all leaders know, we want to have our employees come to work, all in committed to the organization's mission and willing to give 100% effort.

And that's what we're talking about today is, what can we as leaders do or as colleagues do, for that matter, to create a culture that can lead people to wanting to be fully engaged and doing their best work? All right, let me talk a little bit more about the benefits of having an engaged work team.

The Dale Carnegie Training company did some research that I think you'll find interesting that said that highly engaged employees-- again, I'm defining highly engaged as people who come to work wanting to give 100%, they're totally committed to their organization's mission and vision.

They are 480% more committed to helping the organization succeed. That's amazing, to think 480% more committed to doing what it takes to help their organization be successful. There are 200-- and along those lines, there are 250% more likely to recommend improvements.

I mean, they are so committed to the organization's success that they take initiative to let the higher ups in the organization, let the leadership team know when they have recommendations for what the organization, or what individual departments, or individual employees can do to be more productive or to provide higher quality services.

And they're also 370% more likely to recommend their organization to others. So they act as really ambassadors on the street for your organization. They'll be saying, hey, you really should come to work for my organization. It's a great organization. It supports its people. It provides great services.

So again, when we create an environment where people get engaged, they're going to be on the street advertising our organization for us and helping us recruit more engaged employees to come to work for the organization. Now, I also want to talk about research done by Globoforce.

Globoforce is an organization that really looks at employee satisfaction. But as most of you recognize, employee satisfaction and employee engagement are very connected. Engaged employees tend to be pretty satisfied. And satisfied employees tend to be pretty engaged.

So Globoforce research said about happy or satisfied employees who are more than likely going to be engaged as those employees stay twice as long with their organizations. And so if you're looking to increase your retention rate to keep more of your good people longer.

I mean, we want to create an environment where they will be fully engaged and satisfied. They're going to stay a lot longer. Those employees are also 85% more efficient in their work. They're going to do better quality work when they are engaged and when they are satisfied.

There are 10% or 10 times, sorry, 10 times less likely to take sick leave. They don't call out as often because they really enjoy the work that they do and the people that they work with. And they're 50% more likely to help their colleagues. They're going to be good teammates.

Folks, what are your thoughts? If you could use-- please, if you could use the chat to communicate with me, if you could please use the chat, I would love to hear some of your thoughts about the benefits of having a more engaged work team. Again, if you could use the chat and type in some of your thoughts, I'd love to share them with each other.

So again, what I'm looking for is your take or your suggestions around or your experience around the benefits more of having a more engaged work team. Again, if you could give me some of your thoughts in the chat, that would be wonderful. I'd sure appreciate it. [audio out]

All right, folks, thank you so much. Yeah, someone got my attention that there was no sound. So I just corrected that. Thank you very much for that. So let me take a step back. I appreciate that very much. Thanks for letting me know about that, folks. Thank you. All right, so let me go back really, really quickly. Thank you for getting my attention through the question box.

And so what we're talking about here, again, is proactively bonding with your employees. So to make a long story short, we want to make a commitment to spending time with our people on a regular basis and see it as an investment. What I found is that a lot of people, a lot of supervisors are very task-oriented.

So when they meet with employees, it's more often focused on getting assigning work, answering a question, solving a problem. And so because of that, they're more reactive and they don't spend as much time bonding with employees.

So the employees typically will see their relationship with their boss in those environments more as transactional and more work-related. And they won't feel as connected with their boss and they won't feel as cared about. One of the things I learned the hard way in my 30 years of managing people is, early in my career, I was so focused on tasks.

And I am a bottom line-oriented guy. I like to get stuff done, but I wasn't spending enough time with people, just catching up with them, asking them about their families, asking them what they were going to do for vacation this summer, asking them about, did they see the game this weekend? That's been a big difference maker for me over the years.

As I've learned to see spending time with my employees as an investment and that bonding with people, building strong relationships is the foundation of people's motivation. It's interesting. Bob Nelson, a guru of leadership, he has a famous quote that says that an employee's motivation will typically be the sum total of their interactions with their boss.

If most of their interactions with their boss are caring, if those interactions with the boss are supportive, if that boss pays attention and shows the employee that they value their input and they're interested in seeing what's going on with them, those employees typically are going to be much more motivated to do their best work.

So to continue with that, we want to prioritize people over tasks. Now, obviously the tasks need to be completed. We got to get the work done. But we can't be so task-oriented that we're all businesslike whenever we interact with people. We need to be more proactive in meeting with the staff and bonding, taking an interest in them as people, not just as workers.

And I've come to see spending time with my staff as an investment. And I've really learned that if you treat your people well interpersonally on a regular basis, stay connected with them, stay-- continue to show interest in them over time, pay attention to them, make sure their needs are being met as employees and as people, they'll be more motivated to do a better job completing their tasks, they'll be more engaged in getting the work done at a high level.

And so one of the ways to do that consistently is to meet regularly one on one with staff. This is a best practice. Gallup, the polling company, really has some research around this that says that employees that have structured meetings on a regular basis with their supervisor.

Doesn't have to be weekly, it could be weekly, it could be biweekly, it could be monthly, but there's something about the dynamic of employees meeting regularly with their supervisor that creates an environment where employees want to give 100%. Gallup said that the people who meet regularly with their supervisor in a structured way like that are three times more engaged than those that just meet with their supervisor on an as needed basis.

And I've been-- over the last 10 years, I've been meeting pretty consistently on a regular basis with the staff and I've noticed that my relationships have become better with staff members. I'm able I'm more proactively bonding. And just by starting every one on one meeting, just by catching up with people, seeing how they're doing, how their family is, did they see the game? Showing following up on things that I know they're interested in, I see that as an investment.

And I've noticed my team has been far more engaged the last 10 years when I've been doing that than prior to that. So I highly recommend we want to meet regularly with staff one on one. And don't just get right down to business so people see your interactions as cold and business like.

Make sure you spend at least the first five or 10 minutes of every one on one session catching up with the employee and making sure that you're showing an interest in their world and in their lives makes a world of difference. And when those connections are great, people are much more likely to get fully engaged and do their best work.

Folks, I want to give you an opportunity. Again, if you can, go to the question box, I want to hear some of your advice. If you can share, what are some things that you do working with your team that has really helped to set the stage for them becoming more engaged in their work? What are some of the techniques and strategies you use to maintain a highly engaged work team?

Again, if you could please type your comments or suggestions in the question box. One of our colleagues says that she does monthly one on ones and biweekly team meetings, both with agendas.

I like that I'm a big advocate of doing regular one on ones and regular team meetings. I like that, that it's organized with an agenda. That's great. Another colleague says, we do huddle twice a week. And we do monthly one on ones. That's great. That's awesome. Anybody else? We have another colleague says we have weekly team meetings. Excellent. That's great.

Yeah, I've been doing weekly team. I've been over the last 10 years. I've done biweekly and weekly team meetings. And I even got more I think I got more mileage out of the weekly. Just gave us more opportunity to stay bonded and stay on the same page together. Another colleague says, our team works closely.

Let's see. Another colleague said, engage each person each week in an informal setting and ask how it's going. I like that strategy too. Managing by walking around walk around to people on a weekly basis or if they're working remotely, connecting with them virtually on a weekly basis and just informally ask what's going on and how they're doing, I love that.

And it doesn't have to be scheduled. I mean, as long as you're consistently staying connected with people, I think you get the same benefit. Another colleague said I personally keep team chats to staff individually to thank them. That's great. That's wonderful.

Another colleague says we do monthly huddles with everyone and monthly one on ones individually. I love that. Another colleague said I try to be present in both offices that I supervise. That's great. Thank you so much, everybody. That's wonderful. Thank you for weighing in. I appreciate that.

Our next let's talk about using a collaborative communication approach. Another key to building an environment where people are going to be more motivated to get fully engaged is to be collaborative when you're communicating with staff. What I mean by collaborative, again, is to treat staff more as a partner than as an underling.

And so for example, if we're treating people as a partner, giving them-- taking interest in their ideas, giving them input into work plans and to problems that are being solved, just treating your employees really respectfully and as a partner, making them a part of things, making them feel that you value their opinion and their input, I think that makes a world of a difference versus just treating people I'm the boss and you're the staff and where you're directing and telling people what to do and directing things, one way communication.

But being more of a-- treating people more as a partner, having more collaborative conversations, more two-way conversations, just working with staff in that partnership way, people want to feel like they belong. They want to feel like you respect them enough that you want to partner with them. You want to work with them. I think it's really important. And we do that by collaborating regularly, asking people for their input, asking people for their advice.

When supervisors ask employee for their input, their advice their insights, their ideas, employees will typically feel more respected, which always leads to more motivation and engagement. So collaboration really sets the stage for an environment where people are most apt to give 100%.

And as part of that you want to make sure you're not being too directive. As I mentioned, don't talk at people if you can avoid it. And yes, it's OK to give direction sometimes. I think we all know that if there's maybe only one way to do something or if maybe there's a safety issue and you've got to just be really direct in what you're communicating to the staff, I think that's fine to do that during those times.

But at least half the time we ought to be having good two-way collaborative conversations with people. If we're always, for example, telling people what to do and how to do it, giving commands, giving direction, making suggestions, if we're doing 80% of the talking when we're interacting with staff, we may be too directive in our approach.

Remember, again, employees want to feel like they're a part of things. They want to feel respected. So if you-- rather than telling people what to do when you're assigning work, why not have a conversation and say, hey, I've got this project that I want to assign you, can we brainstorm what you think we should do to get this thing done?

I think you do a great job with it and give the employee a voice in creating the project plan, instead of just dictating it to the employee and telling them what to do and how to do it. So I think, again, it works so much better interacting with people when we're less directive and more collaborative, again, with the caveat that there are times when it does make sense to be more directive.

And there are some staff members that may not be very collaborative and may want to be want to have you be more directive. And so you can certainly adjust case by case. But I think by and large, if 80% of the time we are focusing on being a good partner and showing an interest in people's input and having good two-way conversations, we're absolutely going to engage the staff more.

All right, folks, again, if you can use the question box, I would love to hear, again, how you collaborate with staff. How do you get the staff more involved in things? One of our staff members said, please and thank you goes a long way. I love that. I love you. You're absolutely right. We need to be polite with people. You bet.

Yeah, just because we're their supervisor doesn't mean we shouldn't be courteous. We should be courteous to everybody. I know I'm preaching to the choir about that, but folks, let's talk a little bit more about-- before I get into recognition and appreciation, let's talk a little bit more about ways that we can get people involved in good two-way conversations.

Folks, what are your thoughts about that? What are some ways that we can get people more involved in good two-way conversations? How do we do that? I try to when I assign work, I try to share what I want someone to do, but give them input into the "how." What are your thoughts about that, folks?

What do you do to get people more engaged and good collaborative conversations, whether it's about developing work plans or solving problems? What are your thoughts? Again, if you can use the question box. I'd love to get some input from you, folks.

One of our colleagues says being genuine is huge when they know you truly care what they think. I love that. People open up, you're right. You have to be sincere about it. You can't do it as a technique. You've got to be sincere. You got to want. You got to want to-- I mean, I've come to truly value people's input. I realize I'm just one guy. Sure, I've got some ideas, but I don't know it all.

I need people's input. And so I regularly practice saying, hey, what do you think? Have you ever done something like this? How did you handle this in the past? Can I get your advice about something? The more we do that, like our colleagues said, if you genuinely show interest in people, it's very motivating. They will really appreciate that their supervisor cares about what they think. That's a great point. Thank you for that.

All right, let me ahead and continue. Another colleague said delegate a task. Ask them for the big picture steps to work on the task. I like that. Then ask, how can I support you on the project? I like that that's a-- I like that-- I like you asking when you delegate that you ask people to come up with the big picture steps for how this job is going to get done. I love that.

And then so offering your support, that's fantastic. I think that's a wonderful collaborative approach. Another one of our colleagues-- good stuff, folks. Another one of our colleagues says that give a project with no guidance. Sometimes try giving a project with no guidance just to see what the staff comes up with. I think that's a great exercise.

And people are so bright. When they feel that we're-- like our colleagues said a moment ago, when our staff feels like we're truly interested in their ideas and their input, I mean, they will open up and they'll come up with some really great stuff, absolutely. Thank you, everybody.

Another colleague said, Brené Brown says paint it done for me. I like that. That means ask people for what they want done to look like. I try to do that with my employees. I think that's a great technique to ask people what they want done to look like. I think that's great. I love that I'm going to give that some thought. That's awesome. Good suggestions, folks. Thank you.

All right, next, let's talk a little bit about acknowledging the importance of people's work and showing appreciation and recognition. And I know most of you do this, but it's interesting. There's some research out there. Now, there's one research study that's identified in the book, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. It's a really good leadership book I highly recommend that says the 70% of American employees don't feel appreciated enough at work.

So they don't feel their supervisor or their organization is thanking them enough or is demonstrating appreciation, showing appreciation for their efforts. So I think that's really important to know. And so we want to stress the importance of their work. Make sure your employees-- when you sign work, don't just tell them of what you need them to do, but also help them know why the work is important, why the work is significant, what their contribution is going to give to you and to the organization.

I think people get more motivated to take on tasks when they know the significance of a task. But think about it. If you're working in accounting and you're doing different spreadsheets every day and no one ever shares with you the value of that information that data that your spreadsheets or the analysis you're doing around that data, stuff can become mundane over time.

But if when you assign another data analysis that you need done and another spreadsheet that you need the accountant to do and you let that account know how important that research is and that analysis is and how it's going to go to the executive director and they're going to report that to the board, that would be a great example of saying, wow, this is a meaningful task.

That puts bounce in people's step. It motivates people to know that their work matters. So I think it is important to stress the importance of people's work. And then consistently express appreciation. We need to say thank you on a regular basis. There's a bullet around that statistic I shared from the leadership challenge.

But when you're thanking people for their contributions and when you're showing appreciation for their efforts, don't just show appreciation for results. Don't forget to also express appreciation for efforts. All people can control much of the time is their effort.

Sometimes the work we're doing we-- someone can work really hard on something, but we can't control the result. It's out of our control. All we can control is the effort. So I want to be careful not to just give people a kudos or demonstrate appreciation and say thank you when they get a great result. But I also want to show appreciation when they put in a lot of effort.

I noticed some of the proposals we do for Deer Oaks AllOne Health, the folks on the team that do those proposals do an incredible job. And those proposals take a long time to put together. Some of them can be as much as 100 pages long. And even if we don't get a good result, even if we don't get awarded a contract for that proposal from that proposal, that proposal writer still did an incredible job of doing all the work, developing that proposal.

And the result sometimes is out of their control. So I want to make sure that we also say thank you for doing such a great work or for doing such great work and putting in such time and effort on that proposal. You did an amazing job. And I'm very grateful. That goes a long way to make people feel cared about and respected and appreciated.

And then last but not least, there's a book out there called "The Carrot Principle," folks, that the number one thing, there's a research study in that book that says the number one thing people want from their supervisors, the number one behavior they want from their supervisors is to be recognized for the good things they're doing. And so let's make recognition a weekly habit.

Another research study showed that people need recognition once a week. It's a need. And so you might have given them some great recognition a month ago when they did something great. But then things just quieted down. And there hasn't been a reason to go out of your way to do that in the last month.

But folks, remember, be looking for things to recognize people for, be looking to recognize a quality, assignment that they completed, maybe they did something great to help a colleague, maybe they provided great customer service, or maybe they turned in exemplary work, whatever the case may be, but go out of your way to give recognition.

I try to give recognition on a regular basis. I love to send, reply all emails, to say, hey, I want to just recognize so-and-so for doing an incredible job on this last project. Thank you so much for your efforts. It was pretty amazing.

I love to do that and then make sure my boss gets copied on it. And so go out of your way to give recognition. And I know we all know this, but we need to make it more of a consistent habit because people need to be recognized on a regular basis.

All right, last but not least, folks, let's talk about supporting people through times of stress and change. And we're talking about creating and maintaining an environment that people that's going to create motivation for people to do their best work to get fully engaged.

Stressed out people oftentimes are not going to be as engaged as employees that are not stressed out employees that are managing their stress well, getting a lot of support for their volume of work, getting assistance to meet deadlines, knowing that they've got a team that's there and a supervisor that has their back.

And so I think it's really important to continue to maintain and provide support. The world's a stressful place. As you all know, Gallup, the polling company, now says that we are living in the most stressful times in history, folks. And so, again, I want us to remember that.

And just remember to be thinking about how you can support your employees when they're busy, when their workloads are heavy, when someone's going through a lot. And now because the world is so stressful, people are showing up at work already stressed before they even get into the stress of the job.

We need to do some things intentionally to help people manage their stress. One is model it yourself, model taking care of yourself. Make sure people see you taking your lunch break. If people see you working through lunch every day, don't be surprised if some of those people start working through lunch thinking that that's the expectation.

No, folks, people need their lunch break. I recognize that every once in a while we might have to work through lunch because we're on a deadline. But we should be modeling, leaving the work at a decent, leaving the office at a decent hour, taking our lunch breaks, taking care of ourselves, and encourage your employees to keep their lives in balance.

Again, take their lunch breaks. Make sure their pace of work is healthy. Ask people when you're doing your one on one meetings, how is your pace of work right now? How's your workload? A lot of times people won't complain. They might feel overloaded or overworked, but they won't complain because they don't want the supervisor to think they can't handle it.

Be proactive. Ask people, how's your workload? Everything OK? Do you need any support from me? Again, that gives that employee an opportunity if they are feeling overloaded or if they are feeling overly stressed, to be able to share that with you and then you can help them find some solutions or provide some additional support. So just be thoughtful and intentional about helping people manage their stress.

And then make sure if there's a lot of change in your environment. Change is very stressful also for people. Make sure you're monitoring the pace of change in your area. If there's been one change after another in your area and for your team, don't be surprised if the team struggles with their stress level and it improves-- or excuse me, it has a negative impact on people's engagement and overall productivity.

Again, when people are stressed out, it's hard to stay fully productive. We get into survival mode. So manage the change the amount of change in your department well, and that includes making sure upper management knows if your team's been through a lot change the last six months or the last year and people are really stressed and people really burned out, make sure upper management knows about that so that they're careful not to roll out too many changes or too many new programs.

And make sure if there is going to be a change that's going to happen-- a lot of you remember John Kotter, the Harvard guru about change management. He talks a lot about whenever there's a significant change, give the employee some input into how that change is rolled out.

Now, obviously a lot of times changes are decided upon higher up in an organization and it's too late for an employee to actually have a voice in how that change looks. But you can always give employees input into how the change is rolled out in your area or how the change is implemented in your area.

The more input you give employees into, the more heads up you give them that a change is coming, the more advanced notice and give them a voice in how you're going to roll that out in your area and give them a chance to discuss those changes. People generally adjust to change better and are able to make those transitions more effectively.

All right, folks, I know we covered a lot in a very short period of time today. I want to open it up for questions. You can use the question box to type in your questions. I want to remind you, some of you may have joined us late. At the beginning today I shared, again, this today's topic Creating a Culture of Improved Employee Engagement is part of the 2025 Deer Oaks AllOne Health Leadership Certificate Webinar series.

And this is, I believe this is the 10th year give or take, that we've done this offered this series and the series basically provides a certificate to individuals that attend all four of our quarterly sessions, this being one of the four today in February, if you missed the first session, it was called how to hire the right employees.

You can still get credit for that by viewing the recording link. So if you missed that one and you do want to get your AllOne Health Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate at the end of this year, do hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and ask our staff to send you the recording link. We'd be happy to do that.

We do track who clicks on those recording links. So you'll get credit. If you click on that link and you watch the entire thing, you'll get credit for attending. And then we've got two more sessions. This is quarter 2, of course. We have two more sessions coming up later in the year. In August, we've got our third session for the year, how to motivate a multigenerational work team.

And in November, we have advanced coaching skills for leaders. Again, if you have not had a chance to register for those two sessions, all you have to do is, again, hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and ask our staff to send you the registration links, again, for how to motivate a multigenerational work team that's scheduled in August and advanced coaching skills for leaders at scheduled in November. We'd be happy to send you those.

Folks, do you have any questions today? We still have plenty of time. Anyone have any questions? Again, if you have any questions, just type them into the question box in the GoToWebinar software. All right, looks like we don't have any questions today. Not a problem.

I really appreciate it, folks. Thank you so much for being with us. It is such a pleasure and a privilege for Deer Oak's EAP. We're an AllOne Health company. To be the employee assistance program provider for all of your respective organizations, we really appreciate the opportunity to serve you and your family members.

So thank you for joining. I hope to see you all on our next session coming up in August, how to motivate a multigenerational work team. And I appreciate your time today. I hope you have a great rest of the week and hope you enjoy the nice Memorial Day weekend. Thanks, everyone. Take care. Hope to talk to you soon. Bye-bye.