Engagement Steps
Today there are endless books, programs and consultants that will help with a company’s engagement journey. At Dotson, we continue to use the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP;
www.nist.gov/mep/), a public/private partnership that provides training, tools and connections to accelerate innovation and has 60 centers located in all states.
We also take ideas from everywhere. Bob Kelleher, one of the thought leaders for employment engagement, visited our foundry and described engagement as a “journey without a destination.” Kelleher’s 10 engagement steps and comments from his book, “Louder Than Words,” will be used to highlight Dotson’s current position on this journey without a destination.
1) link Engagement to performance
Ten years ago, there was a question regarding the return on investment for engagement activities. Today, magazines and research reports are reporting regularly that engagement is good for the customers and for the bottom line. The business reason or goal for engagement is profits (high performance) not employee satisfaction, which is an outcome.
At Dotson, we have just finished our 19th consecutive year of
showing a profit. Without question, I attribute this success to our engagement and empowerment efforts. The real payoff has been
in years such as 2001 and 2009 when sales dropped significantly, yet we were able to remain profitable without major layoffs.
2) Engagement Starts at The Top
The CEO and the company leaders must own their culture. It is not something that can be delegated. If the organiza- tion’s culture is not owned actively by the top, others in the organization will define and control it. As you recognize the need to own your culture, there are two excellent books to help you determine what your culture should be. The first is Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” and the second is Stephen M. R. Covey’s “Speed of Trust.”
These two books provided the foundation for Dotson’s first effort to update our core values in more than twenty years. The new values are: · Integrity, openness, honesty · Respect and serve others · Excellent execution · Holding self accountable · Employee empowerment · Celebrating successes
To own these values also means that the leadership team needs to accept and encourage others in the organization to hold the top accountable for each of the values and to chal- lenge others when they are not living the spirit of the values.
Figure 1. The Dotson Philosophy: Our one-page summary of Dotson Iron Castings. International Journal of Metalcasting/Fall 2011 9
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