Episode 18: Glenn Elliot - The Rebel Approach to Employee Engagement
You know how sometimes you meet someone who is so effortlessly inspiring, it is unreal. That was my experience with Glenn Elliott, the founder of Reward Gateway and author of “Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World Class Employee Engagement”.
Glenn is a highly successful entrepreneur and former engineer whose approach to employee engagement is simple, down-to-earth and common sense. To him, engagement is not some fluffy HR issue but the single most important business improvement tool. As a result he is a hugely sought after speaker and travels the world championing employee engagement.
Glenn is grounded, warm and real..and that is what makes him so inspiring. There is no inauthenticity or pretense. And that is what makes him so effective.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
The impact of office design on culture and engagement
"Employee engagement is about creating en environment when people can do their best work and want to do their best work"
The three factors for determining whether a person is going to be engaged at their job
Employee engagement isn't a fluffy issue on the side, it is the single most important business improvement tool
Every factor that will add to your bottom line is connected to people...
Numbers are just a mathematical model of the output of people...so how engaged your people are is critical
According to Gallup, about 70% of people are disengaged at work...and that isn't really changing
Most companies still treat their employees in the same way that we did during the Industrial Revolution (200 years ago!)
If you can't trust the people that work for you, don't employ them...employ people you can trust and build a great team
Most employee engagement is actually quite straight forward common sense and isn't expensive
A huge act of corporate rebellion...saying thank you to people at work ;)
The Bridge Model to Employee Engagement
The easiest places to start in building engagement are communication and recognition
Links
Glenn Elliott - Author of “Build It”
In Glenn’s own words…
A software engineer by training and MBA drop out by choice, it took a ten-year corporate career for me to understand how employee disengagement feels. I eventually escaped and went back to my roots as an entrepreneur where I perfected the art of treating people properly to get the best out of them.
After a series of failed businesses, I founded Reward Gateway, an HR tech firm in 2006. More and more companies were needing to get the best out of their people and we grew successfully helping clients as diverse as McDonalds to McKinsey with key aspects of their employee engagement strategy.
I was CEO there for 11 years. During that time we grew to 2000 clients in 23 countries, 400 staff in nine offices. I sold the business twice to private equity and I bought eight other companies as part of the journey.
Building that $1 billion revenue business, I learned a lot about people, leadership, company culture and how to create an environment where people can do and want to do their best work. I have the scars and grazed knees of a pragmatist and real-world practitioner.
I now spend my time sharing those stories, helping anyone I can and continuing to learn more about people, culture, leadership and the future of work.
I speak at conferences, talk to leadership teams, management groups and employees and I write my blog here weekly.
My first book Build it : The Rebel Playbook for Employee Engagement is available at all major bookstores and also as a digital download on Kindle and iBooks.