In the corporate world, we talk about engagement when identifying how committed workers are to the company they belong to and whether they are motivated to perform their daily tasks correctly and productively. Barbara, the most committed worker in the world, is positioned as an example for work teams.
Companies that have workers with low commitment to their work are less productive, affecting business results.
How can we increase the engagement of our employees? Marcus Buckingham, Business Consultant, Writer and management lecturer for large companies such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Disney, among others, tells us that to achieve employee engagement, there is no secret formula, but there are factors that can boost it.
Meet Barbara, the most productive worker in the world in the following video.
Let me tell you about Barbara:
Barbara is someone you’ll really want to know about because, in fact, she’s the most engaged worker in the world. I know because, as heads of the ADP Research Institute, we just finished this study of nineteen countries. We really wanted to know how high engagement is in different countries and what drives it.
As part of the research, we split, split and split the data and we found one person who is more engaged than anyone else in the world with their job, her name is Barbara.
Who is Barbara?
Barbara, that’s a joke, it’s not really a name, she’s a compound. When we find out the facts about this worker, we find that she is a manager or team leader in professional services. She’s been with her company for over five years, she works on a team, she has a primary job objective and she also has a sort of side job, she’s a blogger.
She works 80% of the time remotely and when she walks into an office, it happens to be her company’s headquarters where she will be for 30 minutes to an hour.
She is married and has no children, but she does have a pet, a python named Gregory. Well, I don’t really know what kind of pet she has, but what I do know is that she does.
Women are a little more committed than men, since professional service is more attractive than working in construction, but of all the things we know about Barbara, one of the most powerful facts is that she is a member of a team, a group of people who have agreed to work together.
It’s true that we like to walk through the world as if people are the same as each other, but if you look around you, you’ll see that surprisingly we are all very different.
Each person’s way of being is a wonderful thing to highlight, the quirkiness of a human being is the best bet, how do quirks come together?
In the service of something useful, the answer is this splendid piece of thousands of years old technology called a team, because if you say you are part of a team, you feel part of a group and you are twice as likely to be fully committed to the job.
Are there any other lessons to keep in mind?
In the world of work the two most compelling reasons for people to be involved and committed to their work is to give them the opportunity to have more control of their lives.
Twenty-five percent of all freelancers worldwide are self-delivered by the position of president. And the second reason that is the most powerful, full-time work gives us predictability and stability.
Instead, freelancing gives us the opportunity to do something we care about. To do what you love, you have to have some stability, some flexibility and creativity, so there’s something we could all learn from if we learned that Barbara is a remote worker,
That might be a little surprising, because we think of remote workers as somehow separate, but the data says that remote workers who feel part of a team are more engaged than face-to-face workers who are in an office on a daily basis.
Clearly, there is some value in working at home and having the creativity and flexibility that comes with having control of your time and activities.
How can I get more Barbara at a time when engagement levels are no higher than 15% of workers?
Eighty-five percent of people in the world work so, quite simply, people do get into a job. Our challenge is, once we get people to come and enjoy our companies, how do we make them engaged and productive.
We’d all like to have the most engaged person in the world working on our team, but you already have them! You just have to help them express that and put yourself in their shoes. The right fit is not anything about Barbara that is intrinsically in her person, but it is a set of things in her environment that each of us could help develop.
What brings out the best in Barbara?
Do you feel part of a team? And the team brings out the best in you, that’s how you get more Bárbaras.
