Employee Engagement

While covering someone's cube with aluminum foil, faking a resignation or gluing office supplies to the desk continue to be among the most common pranks, CareerBuilder.com has named the top 10 most memorable capers uncovered in its survey, of which we selected the best five and then offered alternatives for creating excitement and employee engagement at work. Read below and share your own experience with our readers.

1. Sent a letter signed by the president of the company that informed employees they would have to take potty breaks in alphabetical order.
2. Sent a note to co-worker's pager that said to contact "George." The number was to the White House.
3. Put "random burping" program on boss's computer that would loudly burp every few seconds -- it went on for days.
4. Brought in jelly doughnuts filled with ketchup.
5. CEO placed a very large and official-looking "For Sale" sign in front of the building.

Why do employees do this? It's driven by the desire to humanize the workplace through fun and humor. But it is important in all what we do at work that we maintain respect for others. It's good to laugh with people, not at them. There are many ways to humanize the workplace and add fun and excitement without being disrespectful or childish. Visionary leaders, human resource professionals and corporate communicators can channel employees' desire for a more humane and fun workplace into inspiring and useful initiatives.

For example, some companies conduct employee video contests in which people submit their videos on various topics, from how to have fun at work to how best to serve customers or promote organization's products. These fun initiatives create employee engagement as they offer value and excitement while fostering employee creativity and freedom of expression.

Share with over 19000 readers of HumaNext newsletter your experience with creating excitement and employee engagement at work. Tell us how you, your colleagues, or your company did it, and what made it successful. We will publish it in an upcoming issue of HumaNext newsletter. Send to info@humanext.com

At approximately 11:30pm our Emergency Response Team Leader set up a fire drill (which the employees did not know about) so we all evacuated the building as we normally do for fire drills. Roll was called, etc. We were then told that while it was indeed a real drill, there was also a full BBQ being cooked behind the building for the employees so all made there way to the other side of the building for a free lunch provided by the company! Everyone enjoyed it and had a great time.

One of our managing partners got on the grill and was serving hamburgers and hotdogs to the employees! This is just one of the many ways the culture is ignited at bds marketing through getting employees together in any way possible. This was an April Fools prank that people were HAPPY about!

Are you just beginning your engagement journey? You'll find activities to help you define employee engagement, measure the current level of engagement in your organization and understand critical underlying principles. Are you interested in sustaining and growing employee engagement? Move on to the activities on overcoming obstacles, motivating engaged employees, how world famous leaders lead engagement and other advanced topics.

The activities are organized into six, easy-to-reference sections: · Understanding employee engagement · Getting started to engage employees · Leading employee engagement · Measuring employee engagement · Creating an engaged workplace · Employee engagement communications

Each of these fun and easy-to-use employee activities focuses on a different aspect of employee engagement and can be completed in 30-45 minutes. Each activity includes the purpose, description, time guidelines, resources, presentation instructions, debriefing guidelines and a handout.

Order for $149.95

• Everything you need to build and manage a suggestion program for your department or organization.
• EVERYTHING you need to start a wildly successful suggestion and employee involvement program...all in one kit...so you get started fast.
• EVERYTHING you need to keep your suggestion and employee involvement program going full blast for years to come...and track all the activity and savings from all the ideas.
• EVERYTHING you need is in the Idea-Tool-Kit to re-charge a dormant or under-performing suggestion program...and keep it going with great success for years to come.

The Idea-Tool-Kit Includes:

• Part 1: The Complete SUGGESTION PROGRAM Made Easy ...Do-it-yourself Manual.
• Part 2: IdeaTracker Software to help you administer the entire program.

Read below..

With this Manual you get...

• Step-by-step guidance in all the actions you must take to launch - or to re-launch - your own wildly successful suggestion program or employee involvement program.
• Examples of the very best and most successful suggestion and employee involvement programs...so you know you're making the right decisions in designing your own program.
• Dozens of actions you can adopt to keep your program humming along with enthusiastic employee participation, year-after-year.
• Dozens of activities you and your employees can get involved in to stimulate the continous generation of new ideas.

Contents of The Complete Suggestion Program Made Easy

*COMPLETE. All the best, most successful steps and decisions for your own wildly successful suggestion and employee involvement program. Nearly 25 years of research and experience in suggestion and employee involvement programs went into creating these Step-by-Step guidelines.

All the research is complete, so you don't have to spend hundreds of hours researching for the information and answers you want.

*MADE EASY. Every step you need to take is in this manual, plus guidance and suggestions for every decision you need to make. This manual takes the hard work out of starting - or re-charging - your suggestion and employee involvement program.

Included in the Manual are...

The 7 Basic Steps for making your workplace A Great Idea Factory!
Barriers you have to overcome to achieve a successful program.
How to Gain Solid Backing from Management.
The Complete Step-by-Step Actions to take to initiate a new program - or to re-energize an existing program - and to keep it going year-after-year.
Dozens of ways to get employees to create and share new ideas, month-in and month-out.
Step-by-Step guidance for planning and launching a one-month, intensive campaign to involve all your employees in submitting as many ideas as they possibly can.
Sample program Guidelines.
Sample program Idea Forms.
Sample recognition, award, and acceptance Forms.
Sample Posters for promoting your program to employees.
A Question-of-the-Month Activity with 82 sample monthly questions to get employees to share new ideas month-after-month, year-after-year.
More than a dozen examples of highly successful suggestion and employee involvement programs.

By Jim Collison, President, Employers of America

The quickest and simplest way to work miracles in your workplace is to ask your employees for their ideas. And the smartest, most effective way to get the most ideas from your employees is with a formal employee involvement or a suggestion program).

Employees' brains are usually loaded with ideas that would reduce tensions€¦improve customer service and customer loyalty€¦and continuously improve the quality of products and services.

Amazingly, most employers refuse to launch an employee idea and suggestion program. Or if they do, the suggestion program sputters along and then employee involvement languishes or dies.

Surveys of employee suggestion programs consistently report that the annual savings from ideas submitted in active suggestion programs average from over $700 to more than $1,000 per employee per year.

This means that an organization with 50 employees and an active suggestion program can save over $35,000 a year from ideas submitted by employees. Most of these ideas generate savings year-after-year. So the cumulative value of ideas over time is substantially greater than the $35,000.

Direct cost-cutting, money-saving ideas make up only part of all the ideas employees can offer. Organizations also use suggestion programs to generate employee ideas to improve quality, to improve morale, to add to product lines, and to improve safety.