I was watching a rebroadcast of the History Channel’s Forged in Fire the other day. In what is perhaps the least likely idea for a hit reality show ever, four bladesmiths compete in timed rounds of a few hours to forge workable blades and handles from scratch. Most of the time, the contestants are part-time bladesmiths, hobbyists, or semi-retired. Very few engage in making blades as their sole line of work. They usually have other jobs that pay the bills.
On this particular episode, one of the contestants was a full-time hospital IT analyst who just happened to forge blades as a way to relieve work-related stress. No spoilers here, but he ends up doing well in the competition.
This got me to thinking, “What is this guy doing in IT? Where is his true work passion? Is it grounded in spreadsheets and sitting behind a desk, or wielding a smith’s hammer and wailing on a piece of 2,000 degree steel?” From what this episode revealed, I’d say it was the latter, hands-down.
Where does your passion for work lie? Is what you do for a living consistent with what your true likes and dislikes are—or do you toil at something that does not align with your values?
ENGAGEMENT PAYS
While money and autonomy, or the chance to work for a good cause, are at the root of most career paths and job satisfaction, what happens when what you do is not consistent with who you are and what’s most important to you? It should come as no surprise that people are most happy when their value systems align with their job and career choices, and that when those things are not in alignment employees become disengaged and miserable.
Employee engagement is critical to retention and to productivity. Human Resources Today reports that on average people stay in their jobs four years, and for those between 25 to 34 years of age, that number is less than three years. That’s a lot of turnover and employee churn for companies who spend a lot of time and money recruiting and retaining staff. To remedy, employers need to develop engagement strategies that keep their teams interested, happy, and productive through improvements to work environments, flexible scheduling, competitive salary and benefits, and leveraging the latest technologies at work.
RIGHT PEOPLE FOR THE JOB
I believe the most critical place to start with employee engagement is before a person ever joins your team. Its’ simple, recruit and hire talented people passionate about your brand, the industry in which you work, and/or the kind of work they will be doing.
Inc.com reported that a recent Gallup study revealed that nearly 70% of U.S. employees are disengaged—meaning they’re not all that “into” what they do for work. According to the article, “engaged employees support the innovation, growth and revenue that their companies need.” Conversely, disengaged employees do not.
BOM’S SECRET SAUCE
Barrel O’Monkeyz could not survive without a team of engaged individuals dedicated to serving the Monkeyz mission and all of our clients. At Barrel O’Monkeyz we strive to work with clients who closely align with our values as an organization. This makes our job more rewarding and gets us stoked for showing up for each other and for our clients each and every day.
- We like to have fun. You can sense it in our name and our long-time company mantra: “More creativity, more Ideas, more fun!”
- We are creative. Our team consists of hard-working, dynamic, fun-loving inbound marketing, digital media, and product development experts. While each individual on the Monkeyz team is unique and talented, as a group we can move mountains!
- We’re an active, high energy bunch. We like working with companies and individuals who specialize in sports and active lifestyle markets—companies looking to ramp up their sales, build brand awareness, and launch new products; companies like Torrey Pines, San Diego Golf Reservations, Sunglass and Optical Warehouse, Mobile Edge, Oyama Bikes, Hollywood Racks, Belvedere Exclusive, Passback Sports, Click-It Golf, Amgen Tour of California, and many others.
What strategies do you have in place to ensure that your team stays active and engaged?
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
While Barrel O’Monkeyz can’t help you recruit the right talent for your team—alas, that’s not one of our specialties—we can ensure that companies in the sports and active lifestyle markets will find us to be an engaged, creative, and productive bunch. Our goal is to establish long-term mutually-rewarding relationships with companies that let us flex our creative and strategic muscles in support of building their brand awareness and book of business. We’ll gladly provide a free assessment of your current marketing and branding strategies to help you answer the question, “Are my current efforts contributing to my success?”
You can also check out Barrel O’Monkeyz white papers on a range of topics, from website development, social media, and inbound marketing, to digital marketing, brand development, and design. Each white paper is full of ideas and steps you need to take to turn your ideas into reality.
LET’S GET CREATIVE
Let Barrel O’Monkeyz serve as your seasoned, outsourced marketing team. Our barrel is full of talent and creative arms ready to prove we don’t just monkey around! Contact Barrel O’Monkeyz Today!
