The Engaged Employee
Blueprint, Volume II
Corina M. Walsh is the president of
Shift People Development. In 2014,
Corina Walsh left her cubicle behind
to start her business, Shift People
Development. Today as a certified
coach, trainer, and speaker, she works
with business owners and their teams
to improve leadership and team
effectiveness and build engaging
workplace cultures. She has delivered
her training programs and keynote
addresses across Canada, the United
States, and the United Kingdom. She is
a member of the Canadian Association
of Professional Speakers, was named
one of the Top Fifty Leaders Under
Forty in Atlantic Canada for 2015,
and a YWCA Woman of Distinction in
Business for 2018. She can be reached
at corina@shiftpd.com.
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-095-3 (2018)
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Corina M. Walsh
Abstract: Engaging employees is an enormous ­challenge
for companies and their leaders, costing e ­ mployers
­hundreds of billions of dollars annually in lost ­productivity
and ­crippling innovation. Often CEOs and ­business own-
ers are aware of the problem yet can’t seem to raise the
­engagement levels of their employees. The E ­ ngaged
­Employee ­Blueprint offers an actionable, ­six-part frame-
work that can be used by companies of any size to c­ reate
the kind of workplace where ­employees can’t wait to
come to work every day. The article ­includes an ­extended
case study from award-winning companies that solved
common problems related to employee engagement and
gained a competitive a ­ dvantage by making workplace
culture a top priority. The Engaged Employee Blueprint
provides a plan that companies, business owners, and
managers have been waiting for to help them build a
thriving workplace culture.
Keywords: business, business leadership, employee
engagement, human resources, leadership,
management, organizational development,
organizational effectiveness, workplace culture,
workplace satisfaction
According to Gallup’s State of the American Workforce
(2017) report, not much has changed with respect to
­employee engagement levels over the past several years.
Gallup reports that almost 70 percent of e­ mployees in
the United States were disengaged last year. In Canada,
the numbers aren’t much better. Recent ­research from
the Conference Board of Canada states that ­employee
engagement scores for most organizations have
­
­plateaued since 2010 with only 27 percent of employees
­being highly engaged at work.
These numbers won’t come as a shock to anyone
who keeps up to date with issues or trends related to
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 The Engaged Employee Blueprint, Volume II
leadership, organizational effectiveness, or
workplace culture. What many ­companies
are struggling with, however, is how to
turn these numbers around. Companies
are investing in employee engagement,
an estimated $720  million each year, yet
­engagement levels have barely changed in
the past decade. One of the reasons why
current approaches to engaging e ­ mployees
have failed to produce lasting results is
that employee engagement activities are
sporadic and companies don’t have an
actual strategy for building an engaging
­workplace culture.
In this article, I outline three key ­areas that
companies must focus on in o ­ rder to sustain
engagement levels within their ­organization.
Those three areas are m ­ entoring, appreciation
and recognition a ­ ctivities, and motivation
and ­inspiration strategies. A real-life case
study from ­360insights, an Ontario SaaS
company, provides v ­ aluable insight as to why
a “­one-size-fits-all ­approach” is not effective
for building a positive workplace culture.
Leveraging Mentorship to Engage
Employees
When I look back at my career, at both the
success and the struggles, there was often
someone standing with me either cheering
me on or helping me pick up the pieces.
Sometimes that person was a friend or family
member, and sometimes it was a trusted col-
league. The right mentor can be a p­ owerful
force to help you in your career. The tradi-
tional paradigm of mentorship is a process
whereby one person, usually older and wiser,
takes the younger, less-experienced person
under their wing. Experience, advice, and
insights on how to get ahead and navigate
the workplace are consumed by the men-
tee while the mentor gets satisfaction from
having someone to pass on their wealth of
experiences. Some of my mentors have been
older and more experienced than me, but in
many cases the help and guidance I have
received has come from someone younger,
the same age, or from a group of individu-
als in the form of a peer group. Mentoring
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is any ­relationship where one person ­offers
­guidance or a­ dvice to another, and it doesn’t
have to take the typical one-sided form.
I view m ­ entoring as a key element and
­extension of both ­personal and professional
­development. While I agree that having a
mentor is ­important, I do think that we need
to ­rethink mentorship, what it means, and
how it can be used as an ­engagement tool
in the workplace.
Mentoring has evolved considerably
over the last few years and has shifted
from the notion of a one-sided relationship
to one that serves both parties. If I  wrote
my own definition of mentoring, I would
add that mentorship should be a “mutually
­beneficial relationship.” The ­traditional def-
inition makes the ­assumption that someone
younger or less experienced has nothing to
offer the older, more ­experienced person,
and that is exactly the problem in most
workplaces today. ­ Employees can learn
so much from one another and shouldn’t
­always be relying on the leadership of a
company to find the support and guidance
they need. Senior employees often already
feel taxed and could benefit from employ-
ees taking more initiative to help each other
instead of always turning to management.
Just like employees want t­raining and
­development, they also want o ­ pportunities to
learn from leaders and their peers. ­Millennials
have gained a ­reputation as ­having low levels
of loyalty to their ­employer. The results from
the 2016 ­Deloitte ­Millennial Survey, which
collected the views of 7,700 ­millennials,
found that those intending to stay with
their ­organization for more than 5 years are
twice as likely to have a mentor (68 percent)
than not (32 percent). As you will read in
the next section, mentoring programs are a
great way to bridge the generation gap and
can be used as a means to build loyalty with
younger employees.
The Society for Human Resource Man-
agement (SHRM) reports on the biggest
trends that impact employee engagement,
and one of those trends is the evolv-
ing relationship between employees and
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 The Engaged Employee Blueprint, Volume II
employers. SHRM states that companies
should take advantage of growing partner-
ships in the workplace by encouraging
mentor–mentee relationships, noting that
employees make fewer mistakes on the job
when they can turn to a mentor for a­ dvice,
ultimately saving employers money. SHRM
also reports that employees in mentoring
relationships tend to have greater job satis-
faction as well, which often leads to a more
positive work environment and a higher
level of employee engagement.
Formal and informal mentoring p ­ rograms
are also a great way to help employees learn
how to collaborate and ­appreciate each
other. When siloes form within a company,
you will often hear each ­department play
the blame game, complain about another
department’s inefficiencies, and a­ ccuse them
of not fulfilling their role. What is happen-
ing here is that employees are clouded with
their own notions about how important their
role is within the company with no insight
or ­appreciation for what other departments
are experiencing. When we rethink our
definition of mentoring, we realize that we
can use mentoring as the bridge that will
bring employees together, enabling them to
see the value and abilities that each other
brings to the table.
In this section I will describe two ways
to transform traditional mentoring into
­vehicles that can move engagement into
the fast lane. Mentoring is the entranceway
and doorways in a blueprint. Portals for
mentoring should always be open within
your company to ensure employees have
access to knowledge and support from
managers, leaders, and peers.
Turn the Table on Mentoring
Have you ever listened to a more senior
employee complain about technology, or
express frustration about being inundated
with e-mails and feeling overwhelmed with
trying to manage them? Chances are you
have some Gen Y employees in your com-
pany who grew up using the technology
that the rest of us had to learn while doing
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-095-3 (2018)
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our job at the same time. In order to learn
how to set up a website and blog for my
business I had to take a 6-week course in
the evening. My niece knew how to build
a website from scratch using code by the
time she was 11. Our outdated definitions
of mentoring and who should be mentor-
ing or training whom are keeping us blind
to the many opportunities that could make
our businesses more efficient and engaging.
Young or new employees would do almost
anything to have the ear of a more senior
employee for a few minutes. On the other
side of that, I know there are many senior
employees who could benefit from learn-
ing a few new shortcuts in Excel or how to
manage their e-mail more effectively.
Your company can make it easy for
­employees to match themselves up with a
mentor based on need. It would only take
a few minutes to set up an online forum
using a program like Slack, where employ-
ees list their skills and other employees list
their training or skills needs. We know that
Friday afternoons are the least productive
time in any company. (If you already have
engagement issues, then your employees
are definitely checked out by Friday after-
noon.) So why not take the last hour on a
Friday afternoon for reverse-mentoring
hour? If you don’t want to take time during
work hours, then cater lunch once a month
and get everyone working together over a
lunch hour.
Reverse mentoring promotes the idea
of having intergenerational work teams as
­opposed to strict hierarchies in the work-
place. Employees will learn how to respect
each other and the value what each of them
brings to the table. The Baby Boomers may
begin to have a deeper ­understanding of what
Gen Y is going through in the ­workplace,
and Gen Y employees can gain valuable
leadership skills and learn how to connect
with a group of ­employees with whom they
may not think they have much in common.
Reverse mentoring is an o ­ bvious solution to
the generational ­tension that many work-
places experience.
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