1st Edition

Sustaining Workforce Engagement How to Ensure Your Employees Are Healthy, Happy, and Productive

By Lonnie Wilson Copyright 2019
    498 Pages 30 Color Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    498 Pages 30 Color Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    This book explains the importance of employee engagement – It defines what it is, what it will do for your business, and how you can achieve it as well as sustain it. It covers the history of employee engagement along with why employees were formerly much more engaged with their work and company than they are currently.

    The author explains, in depth, why employees want to be engaged but are not. He discusses the emotional, psychological and social forces that make engagement, the state that people naturally and continually attempt to achieve. Furthermore, he makes a compelling case that engagement is not only natural, but, when achieved, it also creates a happy and productive workforce where employees are not only emotionally but also physically more healthy.

    You will learn exactly how a business can not only cause this engagement to surface, but also how to sustain it. He presents a complete discussion of the "basics and beyond" that are required to support a system of engagement. He explains engagement as a system and how to interpret and utilize a system diagram using the "high leverage points" to further fuel and sustain engagement.

    The book then provides a critical and comprehensive series of discussions of precisely what management must do to unlock the power of a fully engaged workforce. In addition to learning how to measure engagement, there are detailed discussions, along with two confirming case studies, of how to improve your levels of engagement.

    Essentially, the author examines engagement from top to bottom integrating the theories of the scholars, with the experiences of the practitioners. In so doing he can explain, in simple terms, how engagement can be achieved and why people try so hard to create a fully engaged workforce with both the best of intentions and a true passion to achieve it … yet fall short.

    There is a simple reason -- achieving engagement is all about management and the many changes that must be made, and that raises the crucial question: Is management both willing and able to recognize, accept, and execute the needed paradigm shifts? The stark reality is that the changes that must first occur are in the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of the management team. This book gives you a path to follow that may achieve just that. And the remaining question for the senior management is: What are you prepared to do?

    The mystery of achieving engagement is known, the science is known, the answers are not technically complicated, and now it comes down to a simple choice: Are you or are you not willing to change? And with that choice, there are resultant consequences. It is no more complicated than that.

    Chapter 1 – Background Information

    Chapter 2 – History and Current State

    Chapter 3 – Engagement Theory - A Top Down Perspective

    Chapter 4 – Issues with the Theory

    Chapter 5 – Toward a Practical Definition of Employee Engagement

    Chapter 6 – Management 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

    Chapter 7 – Management and Leadership, The Basics

    Chapter 8 – Management and Leadership, The Two Lost Skills

    Chapter 9 - Management and Leadership, Two New Skills

    Chapter 10 - Management 3.0, The Two Key Skills

    Chapter 11 – On Motivation

    Chapter 12 – Intrinsic Motivation

    Chapter 13 – Systems and systems thinking

    Chapter 14 – System Dynamics and Engagement

    Chapter 15 – Activating the Engagement System

    Chapter 16 – Completing the Engagement System

    Chapter 17 – Predicting Engagement and Your Residual Engagement Strength

    Chapter 18 – The Improvement Plan

    Chapter 19 – Final Thoughts

    Biography

    Lonnie Wilson, a Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Six Sigma trainer, has 20 years of experience in manufacturing management with an international oil company. In 1990, he started Quality Consultants, which serves small firms and Fortune 500 companies both in the U.S. and in Mexico. Mr. Wilson has taught for the El Paso Community College and the University of Texas at El Paso and is an active Senior Member of the American Society for Quality Control.