If you work in corporate America you worry about employee engagement. If you work in corporate “World” you worry about employee engagement. And if you pay attention to employee engagement data you know it really hasn’t changed much in 10 years or so.

Hovering around 30%, employee engagement is the Groundhog’s Day of HR issues. The true definition of insanity – same thing different day – same solutions – same results. But what the heck. Let’s do it all over again tomorrow.

K?

K.

With the almost total lack of results that most engagement solutions have provided (except for those outliers everyone uses in their sales presentations) I think it is time to start exploring non-traditional solutions.

And this is one of them.

Add These Three Words To Every Employee Title

Before I tell you the three words, how many of you have heard of a job called “evangelist?”

I first ran into the idea of evangelism in the business world when I read Guy Kawasaki’s book “Rules for Revolutionaries” back in 1999. At that time the idea of a corporate evangelist was pretty much focused on technology. And still is to a degree. The goal of an evangelist is to drive demand and buzz about a company’s technology. You can read a good summary of what the job entails here. The job is about being excited about the company’s technology. Spreading the word. Being positive and engaging around the value the technology brings. Being a tech evangelist is a cool job. Forbes suggested that EVERY tech company needed an evangelist.

I suggest that every company – not just tech companies – should have evangelists. It’s not unheard of. There are 56 Evangelists on LinkedIn. Not as many as I thought but more than zero!

I’ll also suggest that every company already has them but simply haven’t activated them yet.

And here’s how you do it…

Ready…

 

3three

Add these words to EVERY employee title in the company…

…and Company Evangelist

Yep… that’s it….

Sr. Accountant … and Company Evangelist.

Marketing Coordinator … and Company Evangelist.

Chief Financial Officer … and Company Evangelist.

Building Maintenance … and Company Evangelist.

HR Generalist … and Company Evangelist.

I think you get the idea.

If you add those three words to every title in your company two things have to happen.

  1. You have to create a story for people to tell. They will now demand it. After all, it’s in their title and they need direction on how to be an evangelist and how to fulfill that role.
  2. Employees have to think about how to “sell” the company. They will have to, in some small degree, find those things that they are proud to say about their company. Finding and saying those things start a process of discovery and positive thinking connecting them to the company in a more emotional level.

And if you can’t get people to evangelize your company – if employees push back – you now know you have some work to do in order create a place worth evangelizing. If you can’t get employees to evangelize your company – no amount of surveys, recognition and team building will help.

You can take that to the bank.

I’m Paul Hebert – Sr. Director Solutions Architect … and Company Evangelist.