5 Ideas to Keep Your Star Players Engaged

I’m Marilee MacAskill. I’m the business development manager for Dale Carnegie Training. Today, I’m going to talk about five ideas that you can use to keep your star players engaged. There’s a war for talent today, particularly among companies in Northeast Ohio. People want to hire star employees. If you’re a company owner and lucky enough to have a star employee on your team, you want to do everything you can to keep that person engaged and employed and working for you.

I’ve come up with some tips on how managers can keep their star players highly engaged and on their team. Number one, connect. Connect with your people. The reason people are engaged at a company is also the reason they become disengaged. It all comes down to one relationship and that’s the relationship they have with their boss. If you’re the boss, you want to make sure that your relationship with your people is strong and the kind that they want to stay and work hard for.

Number two, collaborate. When you have to make an important decision, ask your people their opinion. They love to give their input. Number three, have fun, especially millennials in the workplace, enjoy having fun and lightening up in the workplace sometime. Companies like Hyland Software here in town have learned that secret. If you’ve ever gone to Hyland, they have a slide that goes from the second floor down to the first floor in their lobby, and they have all kinds of fun plus contests and incentives to keep their people engaged.

Number four, have the courage to communicate and have those tough conversations with people. You know, your star players do not like having to carry the burden for the heavyweights, the dead weight of your company, so sometimes you need to step up and be a leader and have those difficult conversations. Finally, show appreciation to your people. Give sincere appreciation when you see them doing something that’s above and beyond what they’re asked to do or if you’ve coached them and asked them to make some changes, you see them start to make those changes, praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.

In summary, if you want to be the kind of company that keeps highly engaged employees, these are our tips. Connect with them, collaborate and include them in your decisions, have some fun at work. Have the courage to have those tough conversations, and finally, appreciate. Be generous in your appreciation with your employees every day and they will feel like they’re valued members of your team.