The Motivation Agency Blog

“The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.”

For a few decades now, The Motivation Agency has been supporting organisations in their employee engagement journeys. 

I have always been a high mileage driver and like many drivers, I have my favourite fuel stations. 

As we celebrate ‘International Coaching Week’, I thought I would share how I have used coaching outside of the workplace.

I have been talking to a great friend of mine, who works in sales, and as we all know the last couple of years have not been brilliant for retail and business sales. Over the last couple of months, huge pressure has been applied to the sales team to close business for the year-end and this is not landing well, as there is no incentive to do so (positive reward and recognition), just a daily rant and a weekly name and shame on calls, appointments, and orders. 

Reward and Recognition are central to employee engagement, and any employee engagement solution must deliver measurable improvement in business performance. Sales teams are the lifeblood of any successful business and motivating them to perform at their best is crucial for the growth and success of a company. 

'I really wish I’d said…’   

‘If only I hadn’t been so quick to say…’ 

We’ve all been there! 

What does great employee engagement look like? 

Good question. And one that we are always exploring. We get great exposure to some places where good employee engagement is spot on and driving productivity, customer service people retention. We also see places where it is not so good. There are multiple articles out there, including this piece by HR Magazine, which define why employee disengagement matters and its ramifications throughout a business*1. We want to focus on what makes great employee engagement. The strongest take-away, in all the sectors we work across, is that great employee engagement encourages, drives, and motivates people to behave in positive ways. 

These are two important, closely linked concepts often mentioned in the same breath. Understandably so. They are complementary and together they add huge value in the workplace. While empathy gives you the skills to work with someone to understand how they see things, emotional intelligence is about managing your own emotions, to help you see things clearly and constructively.