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Re-engaging Fatigued Employees

curranrecruit
Nov 12, 2014
3 min read

A top performer at your organisation once known for their result-orientation, drive and thirst for challenge, has after a few years begun to ‘disengage’. Merely a shadow of their once energetic selves, they’re withdrawn, contributed little to meetings and rarely socialise with colleagues. While their work is adequate, it’s nothing ground-breaking. Your employee still comes to work but it doesn’t come as a surprise when they come in late, call in sick, or miss a deadline. It seems that your once top performer is fatigued. But how do you re-engage them? In this week’s blog we share a few ideas on how to re-engage fatigued employees.

What does an engaged employee look like?

An engaged employee is one who is willing to exert “discretionary effort,” or effort above and beyond what is required. They’re fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work (Edizen, 2009).

Why did they dis-engage in the first place?

Spotting employee disengagement can be tricky because disengaged employees don’t necessarily correlate with bad employees (they may have once been a very vital and engaging part of your team). However, you might start noticing they are slowly losing interest in the work – they’re uninspired, negative about projects, express that they feel unappreciated, or worse yet they’ve pretty much checked out and do the bare minimum. According to Gallup (2012) disengagement can be triggered by a number of reasons, lack of recognition, not enough challenging tasks, seeing compensation not equal to their ‘worth’ and contributions to the organisation etc. Instead of searching for the reasons why an employee has disengaged in an exit interview, note that engagement is ongoing process. Daily communication is needed. If you do notice one of your people is fatigued or becoming disengaged, you need to take action right away, or better yet have systems in place to make sure that when they do get ‘fatigued’ they don’t feel disengaged but rather supported (or heard) and knowing that if something isn’t working their opinions matter and can make a difference for the better of the organisation and the employee.

What could you do re-engage fatigued employees?

Appreciate. Re-engage your fatigued employee by reminding them that you notice when they do something great. A little bit of recognition and appreciation goes a long way. Frequent awards and appreciation certifications help to keep your people engaged. Studies show that lack of praise and recognition is a top reason that employees are unhappy at their jobs. This is your chance to rethink how you give feedback to your staff, positive and negative. Another way to positively reinforce employees and show appreciation is to give rewards or incentive for good performance. If your organisation is not in a position to offer huge financial rewards, look for other was to compensate or recognise employees; for example offering work/life balance, etc.
Recognise the importance of the ‘social’ aspect at work. Our engagement, trust in leaders, satisfaction, and intent to stay hinge on having friends at work (Globoforce, 2014). According Globoforce’s paper ‘Workforce Mood Tracker’ if you are trying to drive metrics like engagement, retention and build a best place to work, a key place to start will be in encouraging co-workers to establish strong emotional bonds with one another. Globoforce‘s 2014 study found that the average person today spends more time with colleagues than family, with almost everyone (95%) having at least one close friend made through work. Organise social gatherings for your people outside of work, celebrate business accomplishments together and run team-building workshops. Try to bring your fatigued employee back into the fold with these social interactions, the perfect opportunity to rekindle team work and passion for the job.
Communicate and Embed Goals. One of the keys to engagement is defining and articulating what constitutes a “successful” employee and communicating success clearly. Every employee should know what they’re supposed to do and how it impacts your company’s performance (HBR, 2012). To keep employees committed to the mission you need to remind them how their role contributes to the success of the organisation.