Today, it is understood that a healthy and strong culture is critical for the success of teams, whether it be in sport or in business. It’s always been a key element for sporting teams, and yet when it comes to business, over 90 % of the UK workforce is not engaged at work. This places UK workers at the bottom of the European leader board, with only Greece having lower engagement.

In amateur sport, we see passion, purpose, shared vision, spirit and unity. It’s infectious! People play for the love of the game and the love of their team, rarely for money. On the other hand, most disengaged employees would change employers today for as little as a 5% pay rise!

So what are businesses today missing, what’s gone wrong?

All businesses aspire to ignite similar levels of energy and dedication in their teams. So why has this always been a challenge in the business world?

It’s becoming clear that there are huge similarities and common links between sporting team’s success, and the success of high performing businesses. In sport and business, the number one key to a teams’ success (or failure) is its people. What’s the number one key to the success of your people today? Put simply, the answer is engagement.

Today, many organisations better appreciate the importance of investing in engagement strategies by having a standard reward & recognition program. These aim to motivate and reward good behaviours and attitudes.

While these types of solutions do have their place, they can only be effective when part of a broader strategy.

The first step in the direction of success and performance is the creation of a winning culture.

A strong and healthy culture can be defined as one unified group with the same positive mindset, owning and working towards the same winning vision.

Do not be fooled into believing that strong leadership, and an exclusive focus on the development of leaders, is the key to a winning culture.

This is a mistake. It is the people and their contribution that will make or break your business.

Organisations live and die by the people they employ – no matter what industry. Without actively engaged people, the leadership message cannot be heard.

So you want a stronger culture and team engagement but how do you get there – and quickly?

The answer is we start by putting the right system and strategies in place to ensure massive, fast and sustainable change.

Are Your Employees WE or ME?

There are two types of people in every organisation. The WE people and the ME people. If you have more ME than WE people you will always come second or lower. Leaders are 100% WE.

Collective Accountability

Critical for fast and sustainable success. It’s about ensuring everyone is regularly, and publicly held accountable in the right environment with feedback given effectively and with the interest of the individuals growth at the heart.

Equality Creates Unity

Equality is necessary to ensure team unity. The traditional hierarchical structure is not the most efficient option for businesses these days. Instead today’s successful businesses have the ability to empower their people. This gives them greater autonomy and the knowledge that they own their decisions and actions

Habitual Leadership Acts

Mainstream leadership training is generally knowledge based, not action based. Habitual Leadership is ongoing and is all about actions. Leaders are not usually held accountable for the short or long term, which is why current leadership training strategies generally fail.

The 2 Fundamentals of Engage and Grow

There are two fundamental requirements when building a thriving organisation:

1) Quality systems, processors and game plans, which is ‘the brain’ of the organisation.
2) Quality leadership, engagement and culture, which is ‘the heart’ of the organisation.

The two most important organs of the body are the brain and the heart. We cannot survive without them functioning. They will work on small portions of blood flow, but they will be working harder than they should be, and it’s not sustainable long term. I liken this to analogy to most organisations that are just surviving. If you have an unlimited amount of blood flow, full of fresh oxygen, then the brain and heart will work in unison at full capacity. It will be better equipped if there are problems which creates a thriving body (or organisation).

Good communication is the bloodline of any successful business. If communication is slow, then the organisation cannot flow.

‘ A NEW Group Activation System’ – Company training is the least desirable and effective way to learn.

Finally, 90% of today’s business leaders think an engagement strategy has a positive effect on commercial success, and yet only 25% of them have a plan to do it! In today’s competitive world, your people are your edge.

Old fashioned ‘knowledge dumping’ training programs are no longer efficient when it comes to employee activation. The game has changed. Have you changed your game to keep up?

Engage and Grow Global founder and CEO Richard Maloney used his professional sports coaching background to create the Group Activation program with it’s unique 12 engagement keys which dramatically transform organisational culture, behaviours and performance in 12 weeks.

To find out more about how to activate your people and create a culture that will deliver you massive results, increased productivity and profitability then connect or email me  sarahwilliams@actioncoach.com to arrange your employee engagement survey