{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Mads Singers Management Podcast ","title":"MSMP 77: Tonya Sowles on Employee Engagement","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2669,"description":"Employee engagement is a secret weapon of fast-growing businesses, and today’s guest for the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Tonya Sowles, is someone deeply passionate about making sure team members are engaged, not just counting hours until they clock out.  She’s a general business consultant specializing in HR.  While she is a Senior Certified Professional for the Society of Human Resource Management, she’s also got an MBA and over 20 years of business experience.  She loves helping owners maximize their people in order to maximize productivity and profitability.\nThat’s precisely where we started our conversation.  Tonya shared the shocking statistic that worldwide only 15% of employees are engaged with their work.  “Engaged” means:\nProactively solving problemsChampioning ideasCheerleading for the brand and helping to recruit\nTonya said that even the best companies sometimes only have a 20% engagement rate, which means in a company of 10, there are 8 employees who might not care.  \nIn my experience part of how you get employees to care is to invest in them.  A famous quote that guides me in this area is an exchange between two executives:\n“What if we invest in them and they leave?”“What if we don’t, and they stay?”\nTonya champions the idea of weekly time blocks to talk with the team in general, and agreed with my oft-repeated advice to meet 1-to-1 with your direct reports each week.  She also had some harsh words for “employee evaluations” as they often are currently used.  She prefers instead more frequent “check-ins” which are borne from the open communication she seeks in having weekly time with her team members.  It’s in these check-ins that we can discover personal and professional goals and see how their work life is aligning with those goals.\nIn those check-ins you can get to know your team better (something that DISC can help accelerate in the beginning).  The better you know your team and show them that you care about their advancement, the likelier...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/uenPn4-fphTH0ovjyLFj05YKzb_-C0rJoiBUiqV16UA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzMxOTAvMTY3MzE5/MTQ0Mi1hcnR3b3Jr/LmpwZw.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}