Exercise in Employee Engagement and Motivation 

Question: Which of the following is the fundamental element for employee engagement and motivation?

1. Creating a work climate that values and appreciates employees. 

2. Having a supportive leader, you can trust as your boss. 

3. Having team members, you consider as friends. 

4. Having work that you enjoy and are good at. 

At the core of engagement with your job, it is essential that you like what you do and are good at it. So, the right answer is D. Of course, you may not enjoy everything that needs to be done, but you should enjoy and be skilled at the most important tasks of the job. This is where you should be spending the most time as well.  

Here is an exercise you can do with your employees or even yourself. It is designed to gain clarify and insight as to what is engaging and motivational for employees. It can lead to planning what to delegate and provide a platform for discussion.  

You can do this using the job description or the custom form I created that you can download for free. You can also use a blank piece of paper and write down in point form each task the employee does. Make three columns, one for level of importance, one for the task, and the other for the level of engagement or enjoyment.  

Go through the list yourself first to note down what you consider the level of importance for each task. Using a 2^nd copy of this without showing the employee your rating for the levels of importance, have the employee score their level of  enjoyment for each task on a scale of 1-5, 5 being highest. You can also add an additional column to add the performance rating of the employee so you can make a cross reference to the levels of importance, the employee enjoyment and your performance rating. Do the performance rating on your own before the employee submits their response to the levels of enjoyment to not influence each other.  

Warning: There must be a high level of trust between you and your employee, or they may not be honest with their scores.

Alternatively, you can have them complete this on their own and then meet after to discuss it.  

After completing the exercise, here are some questions to answer to plan what to do with your findings. 

What tasks are highly important and the employee enjoys and is skilled at?  

What additional tasks can you assign or delegate to further engage the employee? 

What ongoing training would be beneficial to growing the employee’s competency for the highly enjoyable tasks? 

What does the employee enjoy the least? 

Can you assign those tasks to someone else? 

How important are those tasks and can they be eliminated or outsourced? 

What actions can you take to further the engagement and performance of the employee? 

It is important to take at least one action based on the results of this exercise and see what you can do to increase employee engagement and job performance.