Even the Best Firms Aren’t Immune to the Engagement Epidemic
Joychiever’s Hierarchy of
Engagement is here to help.
Your team is the foundation of your firm.
How engaged is yours?
In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment, retaining top talent and keeping them engaged is more important than ever.
Joychiever’s Hierarchy of Engagement serves as a comprehensive model specifically designed for law and professional services firms, providing a framework to understand and improve team member engagement.
This innovative model not only helps organizations diagnose their engagement strengths and weaknesses but also offers actionable insights for creating a highly engaged workforce.
Joychiever’s Hierarchy of Engagement
Addressing seven key components of engagement, such as: Pay, Performance, & Perks, Worklife, Strengths, Autonomy, Care, Connection, and Purpose, our model identifies:
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What your firm is doing well.
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Gaps in your engagement foundation where your firm can improve.
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The necessary engagement formula you can begin implementing today to enact lasting change at your firm.
Pay, Performance, & Perks
A firm’s policies and systems regarding compensation, performance management, and benefits are designed to encourage engagement rather than disengagement.
Worklife
Team members experience manageable workloads, reasonable stress levels, and a sustainable pace, enabling them to utilize rest and relaxation to maintain their well-being.
Strengths
Professionals engage in work that consistently leverages their unique strengths, providing opportunities for growth, challenges, and continuous stimulation.
Autonomy
Team members have the ability to influence their work environment, exercise decision-making authority, and feel trusted by their organization.
Care
Professionals feel acknowledged, appreciated and empowered to express their authentic selves within the workplace.
Connection
Team members cultivate healthy relationships with colleagues and engage in productive, meaningful one-on-one interactions with their managers.
Purpose
Professionals should be able to affirmatively answer the question, “How does my work make a difference?” in order to derive a sense of purpose and fulfillment from their role.
Don’t settle for temporary solutions.
Get to the root cause of it all.
Concern:
A desire for more control over one's work, life, and schedule.
Hierarchy level: Autonomy
Advice: Feeling a level of control can greatly inspire a team member. A leader needs to allow input or influence on when to work, which assignments to accept, deadline setting and decision making.
Concern:
A lack of appreciation and recognition that leads to negativity.
Hierarchy level: Care
Advice: Appreciation is jet fuel for engagement. A leader needs to appreciate day-to-day activities, such as deadlines met, taking initiative without being asked or exceptional creativity of a solution.
Concern:
Complaints about a lack of opportunity to grow.
Hierarchy level: Strengths
Advice: A team member is motivated by improvement. The firm and leader need to ensure there are opportunities to attend training, as well as access to stretch assignments.
Concern:
Overburdened by the 24/7 nature of serving clients.
Hierarchy level: Worklife
Advice: Always-on pressure can be crippling. The leader need to clearly communicate expectations for responsiveness and availability, ensuring there are also times to unplug.
Concern:
Feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Hierarchy level: Connection
Advice: Working in a hybrid environment can make it tough to feel connected. A leader needs to meet regularly with individual team members and enable everyone an opportunity to contribute during team meetings.
Concern:
An inability to answer, “How is my work making a difference?”
Hierarchy level: Purpose
Advice: Everyone wants to feel like the work they do matters. A leader needs to provide the bigger picture when giving assignments and continuously draw connections between the results and how the team members contributed.
Concern:
Doing the minimum work, but not anything extra.
Hierarchy level: Autonomy, Connection & Purpose
Advice: Quiet quitting is as much about the leader as it is the individual. Leaders need to allow for more control of work life, foster 1-1 connection with the individual team member and regularly discuss why their work matters.
Concern:
Feeling ragged and exhausted from heavy workloads.
Hierarchy level: Worklife
Advice: Continuous overwork is not sustainable long term. A leader pushes back on unreasonable deadlines and manages the ebbs and flows of work so as to not be chronically stifling.
Concern:
Lack of a pay increase despite a positive review.
Hierarchy level: Pay, Performance and Perks
Advice: Transparency is critical in pay and performance discussions. The firm needs to clearly articulate expectations, good news and bad news in pay and performance conversations.
Firms that adopt Joychiever’s Hierarchy of Engagement model experience noticeable increases in team member engagement levels, leading to happier and more committed team members as well as increased productivity and improved firm performance.
