The global economic crunch has brought persistently higher unemployment levels to many countries. That dramatically slowed – and even reversed – a focus on attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent. In some cases, organizations were focused on survival. But in too many cases it was a near-sighted focus on the short term.

We’re seeing a revival of interest in building “magnet organizations” that attract, engage, and retain the best people. In preparing for leadership and culture development work with a U.S. healthcare Client this month, we referenced a research study from The Ken Blanchard Companies on this issue. Building on their previous study “The Leadership-Profit Chain” this new research looked at “the new rules of engagement” by surveying over 2,100 people to determine the core elements that ignite employee passion.

Eight Key Factors Influencing Employee Passion

  • Meaningful work – Employees perceive the organization’s larger purpose through products or services produced, consider their work to be worthwhile, and are proud of their individual actions and contributions that help the organization serve its customer.
  • Collaboration – Employees perceive an organizational environment and culture that enhances collaboration, cooperation, and encouragement between all organizational members.
  • Fairness – Employees perceive an environment where pay, benefits, resources and workload are fair and balanced and equitable, people treat each other with respect, and leaders act in an ethical manner.
  • Autonomy – Employees perceive an environment where people have the tools, training, support, and authority to make decisions.
  • Recognition – Employees perceive an environment where they are praised, recognized, and appreciated by colleagues and their leader for their accomplishments, where they receive monetary compensation for those accomplishments, and where they are contributing to positive relationships with others.
  • Growth – Employees perceive an environment where people have opportunities to learn, grow professionally, and develop skills that lead to advancement and career growth.
  • Connectedness with leader – Employees perceive an environment where they trust their leader and where the leader makes an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.
  • Connectedness with Colleagues – Employees perceive an environment where they trust their colleagues and where their colleagues make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them.

An old Chinese proverb reminds us to dig a well before we’re thirsty. If you’re leading a team or developing supervisors and managers, now’s the time to review the strength of these factors within your team or organization.

To read the full white paper, see Employee Passion on The Ken Blanchard Companies web site. You need to register (no charge) to download the eight page PDF file.