Are your employees engaged in their work? That is, are they committed to doing their best, motivated to performing with excellence?

Employee engagement is an important business concept cited by a variety of sources and backed up by research performed over the past several decades. If your workforce is not motivated, the result is a decrease in productivity, profitability, and overall performance. In addition, the organisation is likely to suffer from a high rate of turnover, on-the-job accidents, and even employee theft.

Obviously it pays to promote engagement in your frontline staff. But how do you accomplish this rather subjective goal?

We still start by examining a model created by behavioural psychologist Thomas Gilbert. In his book, Human Competence - Engineering Worthy Performance, published in 1978, Gilbert identified the three main components of behaviour, based largely on his mentor, B.F. Skinner's, precepts. These three components, also known as ABC, are the Activator - information a person receives, Behaviour - the person's response, and Consequence - the result of acting in a certain manner. According to Gilbert, the Consequence is what determines whether or not a behaviour will be repeated, due to a positive or negative outcome following it.

Another way to think of the ABC model is to refer to Information, Support, and Motivation. An employee receives information, for instance, he is told that pushing a related product after a customer agrees to make a purchase will increase the company's profitability. That information is supported by his observance of a top performer using this principle to add another item to the total sale. The motivation is provided by a desire to match, or beat, the other employee's success. At least this is how it would work in a perfect world.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes two of the factors get in the way of success: Behaviour/Support - because the employee just can't understand what is expected of him and Consequence/Motivation - because the employee just doesn't care. Luckily this scenario represents only a small percentage of all employees in the workplace. For the most part, workers are smarter, and more caring than that. Chances that you've hired someone who fits this profile in the first place are slim to none.

Consider that if you wanted to promote incompetence, however, you would probably not provide your employees with the proper information, you would not give them the proper support or tools to allow them to act appropriately, and you would reward both underperformers and exceptional employees with the same incentives, i.e. compensation.

Turn this around and you can easily see what needs to be done to develop engaged employees in your company. You must provide them with adequate information. It is always a good idea to ask for their input before deciding on the best course of action and then ensure that they have the tools at their disposal to allow this behaviour to occur. Finally, you must incentivise workers to perform at their optimum, and not necessarily just with increased compensation. If there is nothing in it for them, employees have little reason to motivate themselves.

If you want to engage your employees, start incorporating this coaching methodology based on a proven behavioural model.