What if you were able to customize every job description to every single one of your employees? What if you could take all of their strengths and create the perfect roles for them to be fully dedicated and passionate to the work they’re doing?
Over and over, research has shown that when employees are working on projects that they feel passionate about, they produce higher-quality work. So, why not let them decide what they want to work on that way they’re always turning out their best work?
As a manager, you can capitalize on the strengths and passions of your team. Odds are, all of your employees are going to have diverse skills and interests. All you have to do is talk to your employees to find out what they feel most passionate about (this also promotes a healthy company culture). After a few casual conversations, you will have the information you need to create the roles your employees will be taking on.
This doesn’t need to be a major shift in your team, either. In most cases, employees will already be in a role that in one way or another aligns with their interests and skills. All you have to do as the manager is create a more narrowed lens of what their day entails.
For example, let’s say you have a member of your marketing team who has shown more interest in writing. You can still keep them on the marketing team, but you can put them in charge of the majority (or all) of the writing within your company.
By doing this, your employee can solely focus on producing the best written content without the distraction of other tasks. The work that once took their attention and energies from writing now shifts to another employee (or multiple employees) who are interested in it.
Slowly transitioning into this shift can also help your employees decide which tasks they would like to solely focus on. You can start by allowing your employees to work on side projects and giving them the time and resources to dedicate to these projects. This will help both your employees and yourself to see where their talents and energies produce the best results.
While implementing these changes will be extremely beneficial, you should be cautious not to confuse short-term engagement with long-term passion. Employees switching projects might cause for an influx in worker engagement, but might not necessarily mean that your employees will be engaged with those types of projects in the long-haul. The key difference being that while engagement will eventually wear off, passion will stay consistent, if not increase over time. Again, implementing side projects before a full transition could help catch this early.
Passionate employees have the ability to change the landscape of your entire organization. They will increase the success and the reputation of your organization simply because you gave them the freedom to choose where their focus was. Don’t let your organization fall behind because the opportunity for your employees’ to work on their passions didn’t present itself.
Meet the passionate members of our team.
Written by Lizzie Sessa
