Are your employee engagement efforts delivering the results you need?

I’m going to venture that they’re probably not.

Here’s why: the traditional focus on engagement has left good people engaged—but exhausted.

Dedicated—but depleted.

The brain science

Over the last year, Juice has been researching exactly how the human brain affects employees’ engagement.

When an employee’s brain is low on energy, they lose their “executive function”—that is, their ability to:

•       Predict outcomes
•       Focus
•       Regulate emotions
•       Initiate action

The executive function places a huge draw on a person’s energy stores.

As a result, what suffers most is value-creation and innovation.

Where does this show up at work?
I probably don’t need to tell you how important value-creation and innovation are to staying competitive in today’s knowledge-worker business environment.

Unfortunately, typical employee engagement initiatives don’t focus on generating energy: they focus on unlocking discretionary effort.

What does this mean?

Your good-hearted employees heed the call, come in earlier, stay later, and try harder in-between.

But they’re exhausted.

And without their executive function, your employees are not thinking innovatively about how to get to root causes and fix systemic issues.

This results in an organizational culture full of firefighting, duct-tape fixes, quick work-arounds and reactivity: the perfect eco-system for energy depletion.

Why does this matter?
The customer experience is entirely at the mercy of the employee experience.

And customers want a human experienceil

They want to experience a brand at an emotional level.

Yet, depleted of energy, employees will provide customer service in an impersonal, mechanical and transactional way.

Delivery of a customer experience that is “human,” “intuitive” and “personal” happens in one way and one way only: through an energized employee6)

It’s energy and passion that unlocks enthusiasm, zest, creativity, ingenuity, innovation, authentic human warmth, vigour, verve and vitality—the ingredients of a remarkable customer experience.

Engagement has gotten employees to try harder and give more, but supplying dedication without energy produces resentment and cynicism. It corrodes an organization’s energy.

Meanwhile, the ethos of energy yields all the effort and dedication of engagement—but goes beyond that, generating passion, vitality and innovation.

How to make this work
Juice has identified seven brain science principles that can help leaders shift their engagement strategies, unlock results, and experience the benefits that come with true employee engagement.

And not only that: seven tips to immediately make it work.

Download a FREE copy of The Engagement Paradox now—and start energizing your organization today!