Doug Conant is the former CEO of Campbell\u2019s Soup Company.\u00a0 When he assumed that position in 2001, he says the environment at Campbell\u2019s was \u201ctoxic.\u201d\u00a0 One third of his 20,000 employees were looking for jobs elsewhere.\u00a0 He and his team attacked the problem with a strategy of \u201cemployee engagement.\u201d\u00a0 As a result, he was able to reduce the number of people heading for the doors from 1 in 3, to 1 in 18.\u00a0 Quite an accomplishment.\u00a0 To learn how he did it, please continue reading below.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot expect to perform at a high level unless people are personally engaged.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0~ Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell\u2019s Soup Company<\/em><\/p>\n Turnover, at Campbell\u2019s Soup Company or anywhere else, is an expensive proposition.\u00a0 It takes a lot of time and money to recruit and train a new employee.\u00a0 Not only that, but turnover begets a productivity problem.\u00a0 In most cases, it\u2019s going to take awhile for a new employee to get to the proficiency level of the employee he or she replaced.\u00a0 So it\u2019s not surprising that, confronted with a turnover rate of 33%, Doug Conant and his team gave a high priority to solving that problem.\u00a0 However, they recognized that turnover was only a symptom, and that the real underlying problem was \u201cemployee engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n There are many moving parts when you\u2019re trying to get people from \u201cnot engaged\u201d to \u201cfully engaged,\u201d but Conant focused on one area in particular.\u00a0 In his view, today\u2019s managers are trained to fix what\u2019s broken, so they endlessly look for inconsistencies, weak links, and flaws in performance.\u00a0 Not that they shouldn\u2019t, but they need to offset that with celebrations of genuine accomplishment.\u00a0 Remember the old bestseller \u201cThe 60 Minute Manager\u201d that encouraged us to \u201ccatch someone doing something right?\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re too focused on catching someone doing something wrong while ignoring what they\u2019re doing right.\u00a0 We need to change that.<\/p>\n Conant\u2019s rules for \u201ccelebration\u201d include:<\/p>\n Bestselling author, Dan Pink, talks about Purpose (with a capital P) and purpose (with a small p).\u00a0 In his terminology, Purpose is corporate mission statement stuff . . . \u201csave the whales\u201d or some equally noble goal.\u00a0 But purpose (with a small p) is about the individual and it\u2019s personal. \u00a0Therefore, when we celebrate the accomplishments of an individual, we answer his or her always present questions:<\/p>\n As noted earlier, there are many aspects to \u201cemployee engagement,\u201d and celebrating genuine accomplishment is only one of them, but a powerful one.\u00a0 Just look what it did for Campbell\u2019s.<\/p>\n In your own organization, do you have problems with:<\/p>\n If so, these are all symptoms of an unengaged work force.\u00a0 While employee engagement may not be the entire answer, it\u2019s certainly front and center.\u00a0 If you believe you have an employee engagement problem, but don\u2019t know how to begin solving it, call me.\u00a0 I\u2019d be glad to discuss it with you.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t cost you anything beyond the cost of the call, and I can promise that before you hang up, you\u2019ll have some thoughts on how to begin assessing the size and source of your employee engagement problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doug Conant is the former CEO of Campbell\u2019s Soup Company.\u00a0 When he assumed that position in 2001, he says the environment at Campbell\u2019s was \u201ctoxic.\u201d\u00a0 One third of his 20,000 employees were looking for jobs elsewhere.\u00a0 He and his team attacked the problem with a strategy of \u201cemployee engagement.\u201d\u00a0 As a result, he was able<\/p>\n\n
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