In May of 2014, through my company, Axero, I released 22 Surefire Ways To Boost Employee Engagement, a short e-book containing 22 of the 23 principles along with some of the case examples and research used in my book, Who the Hell Wants to Work for You?
The e-book started out as a thousand-word listicle article written in the hope that it would bring me SEO web traffic through Google searches. Axero makes intranet software, and since our customers use our product to connect their employees, I figured “employee engagement” would be a good keyword phrase to focus on first.
It didn’t take long for the project to evolve into something much bigger than an article. The more I researched the topic, the more I wanted to know. Why are all these people writing and searching for employee engagement ideas? Why is it so important to them? And what are they doing about it?
I also noticed that much of the advice out there centers on masking the employee engagement problem with creative strategies and software, not addressing the things that are screwing it up in the first place. As an entrepreneur, I realized how important these topics were to the success of my business, at a time when we were rapidly growing. So, I did what any forward-thinking marketer would do when he finds a hot topic: I set out to find the companies that were doing employee engagement well and figure out what they were doing.
After a few months of research and writing, we launched the e-book and promoted it to managers, executives, HR and communications professionals through LinkedIn, Google Search, and other social media sites. Since the launch, over fifteen thousand people have downloaded it—and the downloads continue.
The e-book is available for free (you can get it here). But to download it, one must answer a question:
What’s your biggest challenge at work?
Fifteen thousand downloads (and counting) yielded fifteen thousand responses about the challenges employees and managers at all levels are dealing with every day. The hunger for sanity, practical wisdom, and compassion in the workplace is extraordinary. It’s what prompted me to write Who the Hell Wants to Work for You?
But it’s not only the number of downloads that captivates me. As I read through the thousands of responses to my question, I realize that a lot of these challenges are also my challenges. I want to solve them, too. So that’s what I’m doing.
Most of what I write on this blog comes straight from the challenges people share with me. Every post, I share my thoughts on real-life challenges submitted by readers just like you.
So, what’s your biggest challenge at work?
Let me know by downloading 22 Surefire Ways and submitting my form.
