By Casey Pryor, Project Coordinator
Picture it: Daily presentations, monthly meetings, and quarterly conferences… busy webinars, and heavily attended calls, yet no one is there. Sound familiar?
While it’s common to have weeks packed with calls and presentations, it’s just as common to find those meetings to lack engagement, retention, and therefore effect. Many are working on other things during these meetings, therefore not actively participating in conversations. Rather, they sit idle on “mute,” or work at their desks with the call droning on in the background.
It’s not uncommon for people to multitask during meetings – after all what employee doesn’t have a million things going on at one time? However, when whole teams are unengaged in the topic of conversation, sometimes for the entire duration of the meeting, leadership should be looking for something to liven up the audience. While there are apps that can help monitor engagement and overall employee experience, creating interesting content is the best way to keep staff members interested in meetings.
If employees aren’t wanting to engage in the material, leading these unengaged meetings isn’t ideal either. Presenters and leaders take valuable time out of their schedules to discuss and disseminate information to the workforce, the resulting lack of care from attendees can be quite demotivating. Often times, this dwindles down the group of participants willing to host conversations or trainings, as they expect the material to fall on deaf ears.
By challenging the status quo of company culture and process, leaders can turn the train around and effectively pull employees out of the slump of “mute” calls and meetings. Getting specific is key to improvement, there can be many different ways to get specific and gauge just how engaged certain employees actually are, such as using a learning engagement platform across the whole company to try to create and motivate organizational change and engagement. The perfect solution won’t just appear. What works for some groups, may not be effective or engaging for others. Trial and error are necessary in overcoming this hurdle but gaining employee feedback throughout the process is a must. After all, who better to give insight than those who need the reinvigoration?
Just how can employees be empowered to participate?
- Q&A
- Solicit direct feedback
- Surveys
- And more!