The first part of this two-part series focused on getting employee engagement through telling your engaging story. The second key to employee engagement is conducting engaging meetings.
Employee Engagement Through Engaging Meetings
The best construction teams don’t just share a payroll company; they share a heartbeat. That means they’ve heard your engaging story, envisioned themselves as part of it, and are eager to participate. Don’t disappoint them by conducting wasteful, lazy, dull, or meager meetings.
Even if not everyone on your team is engaged and ready to do their part (yet), conducting engaging meetings gives them an improved picture, a better outlook, and more incentive to align with the shared heartbeat.
Employee Engagement – Begins With Leadership
Engaging meetings have as their backbone the demonstration and articulation of a particular heart – the leader or leaders. This demonstration gives the rest of the team the impetus to join in.
Through wise use of worthwhile meetings, everyone on the team understands where they’re going and what they’re doing. At that point, it becomes powerful. They can pull together in the same direction and confidently believe their efforts have individual and team value.
Engaging meetings:
Allow employees to remain clear on the mission and vision.
Help create alignment.
Increase a means for recognizing commonality.
Provide a place for cohesion.
Escalate the chance for success.
Boost the enjoyment of the process.
Employee Engagement – What Ja Gonna Do?
A construction contracting business requires various employee meetings, which can be conducted in multiple ways. Start by considering ways of conducting meetings based on what needs to be accomplished. Then, you will know who must be in the room, how long the meeting should last, and how much pre-meeting and after-meeting effort will be required.
Each of the eight types of meetings listed below requires different kinds of attention, energy, creativity, and thinking. Remember that the needed meetings vary depending on the team or portion of the team you’re leading.
On Your Feet Meetings (This is not about tailgate safety meetings – that is another category and will be discussed later.) These meetings are short (5-15 minutes), and the attendees stand up. The purpose is to keep the team aligned and deal with quick updates. This type of meeting includes things like running through a schedule or answering quick questions. These meetings can be conducted daily or weekly and can take place in the office, in the shop, or in the field. The key is “on your feet, so short and sweet.”
Learn Something New Meetings These meetings deal with training or teaching. It concerns hard and soft skills. It may involve new tools, equipment, materials, or ways of doing something. For example, if new software is implemented to replace timecards, it won’t work if no one or only a few know how to use it.
These meetings must remain practical and may occur in the office, on the project site, or at another appropriate meeting place. It can involve handouts, slide presentations, or other memory joggers. There should always be time for practice, rehearsal, or other exercises to help employees retain the information.
Important News Meetings Good, bad, or ugly, dealing with the crucial things affecting your construction business deserves attention at planned or impromptu meetings. When there is something important to share, like personnel changes, won bids, jobs nearing early completion, natural disasters, overnight robberies, or anything causing a substantial change in circumstances, calling a meeting and getting the facts from you or other leaders in your company is vital.
Tailgate Safety Meeting “The goal of the tailgate talk is to inform employees of specific hazards associated with a task and the safe way to do a job.” – says just about anyone who has anything to do with the idea of tailgate safety meetings. Asking about the hows and whys of tailgate safety meetings is like asking someone how many siblings they have, only to hear the answer, “It’s complicated.”
For example, no specific law requires toolbox talks or tailgate safety meetings. However, keeping records concerning what was discussed and who attended each meeting can be beneficial during OSHA inspections.
Another issue is that a tailgate safety meeting often aims to remind people of what they already know – construction sites can be hazardous. Everyone must do their part to minimize the danger. Does this remind you of the many times you’ve tuned out the airline “safety talk” concerning seatbelts and so on? One way to overcome the tune-out posture is to use the Southwest Airlines strategy and bring humor into the picture. There are two other methods to consider. One is the in-your-face photos or stories of what went wrong in the past or on other sites. The second is to allow one or more employees to share their stories of near misses or saves in their history. Finally, never underestimate the power of show and tell by supplying tools or other objects for employees to examine during safety meetings.
Tactical Meetings Limiting this type of meeting to about an hour helps focus the discussion, leading to the resolution of crucial issues on the horizon. This is not the time for pie-in-the-sky or get-er-done wishful thinking. Everyone needs to leave the meeting knowing what must be done, when it must be done, and their part in ensuring it is done.
Strategy Meetings As opposed to the Tactical Meeting, this type usually lasts a few hours and covers one primary topic that is further into the future or will have a longer-term impact. While having a written proposal in advance is a good idea, it is vital to allow time for brainstorming, debating, healthy arguing, and working towards a decision. The types of agendas that may need to be included in this type of meeting run along the lines of a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision, or a transition in the team dynamic.
Offsite Meetings Conducted annually or bi-annually, offsite meetings allow your team members to accomplish much. Team members gain much from getting to know one another better and assessing your construction business’s overall intentions and initiatives. Building relationships, thinking through strategies, and working toward long-range planning all invite your team to see the big picture. The value of conducting these meetings offsite is that it often helps individuals and the team, in general, to think differently. Fresh thinking and new ideas can be generated when the normal rhythm and environment are left behind.
These meetings can vary but are usually planned for one day, a few days, or a week. They can also vary in content. A plan concerning what should be accomplished must be in place, beginning with the most pressing need or issue. From there, you should consider things like:
How much time should be devoted to different aspects?
Whether experts from outside the company will be invited.
Who will lead different sessions?
How to deal with other fundamental meeting concerns.
After Action Review Meetings These meetings need not be limited to job completion time. They can happen as often as there are events or experiences that are worth learning from. A mix of “this action went great” and “this action was less than stellar” should be included. The idea is to ask important questions.
What was intended?
What was done?
What worked well?
What didn’t?
What was confusing?
What should be changed?
What was missing?
What can be improved?
Employee Engagement through Improved Meetings
Here are seven suggestions you can use to help improve the quality of your meetings.
Don’t have a meeting if the information can be handled differently (such as email or interoffice communication). Needed updates or follow-ups can be handled in the same way.
Prepare in advance. Don’t wing it. Only a few minutes are used to jot bullet points, which can make a sizeable improvement for brief meetings. Take more time for more extended or more meaningful discussions.
Be sure the right people are in the room—too many people or the wrong people waste time and diminish the meeting’s value.
Make meetings shorter. When possible, end early. There’s something psychologically satisfying about a meeting that ends a few minutes early. Cutting five or ten minutes can often improve the value of a meeting.
Make meetings longer. There are times when substantial vision changes, strategic overhauls, or this-is-bigger-than-we-thought conversations should be given more time.
Draw out thinkers. Be sure to invite input from those least likely to pipe up. Often, the people who are the thinkers are not the talkers. Allow them to provide solutions others have not seen.
Give margin on the front and back of meetings. Adding a few minutes of buffer time is helpful when something happens that needs quick attention, and no one is forced to rush out abruptly.
Bonus suggestion: This is related to the seventh suggestion above. Value the “wasted time” before and after a meeting. The extra minutes before and after a meeting can be exceptionally useful. During those brief minutes, camaraderie is often built, jokes emerge, fascinating company history is learned, and one-off stuff can be dealt with.
Employee Engagement – The Final Word
By sharing your engaging story and providing engaging meetings, you set the scene for engaged employees whose heartbeat is aligned with your vision, values, and company culture.
Building is fun. And it’s way more fun when you can do it with a group of motivated, aligned people who are all heading in the same direction. When the entire team is pulling in the same way, the opportunity for success is improved immensely.
Ambitious Construction Contractors look to The Profit Constructors to provide advocacy in dealing with:
Clients and customers
Employees and subcontractors
Vendors and service providers
Governmental entities
Working with The Profit Constructors gives Construction Contractors the means to organize their operations in ways that help them:
Remain informed
Avoid hassles
Reduce risks
Be future-ready
Ready for action? Or want to know more? Get in touch today to schedule a complimentary discovery call. 866-629-7735
Comments