JLL plants the seeds of sustainability in employee engagement

To elevate the impact of a recent broker training session for his Leasing Team, Parsons partnered with OneSeed to create an experience that combined sustainability with active participation.

Through the initiative, participants were invited to give feedback on the training via a simple yet powerful incentive: the planting of a tree in their name.

Here’s how it worked:

Why Employee Engagement Matters

The concept of employee engagement, first introduced in 1990, was a business breakthrough. Different from employee satisfaction, which focuses on superficial perks and benefits, employee engagement occurs when a person expresses their “preferred self” in their work setting, and is a hallmark of employee performance, and therefore, the organization’s performance.

Trust in the organization’s leadership is the top driver, not the physical environment, and the top steps toward engendering trust in leadership are:

• Regular opportunities to provide feedback
• Management access to their team's feedback
• Feedback taken seriously through action

Organizations with highly engaged employees who feel valued and supported tend to be in better financial health, have a more productive workforce, and have higher employee retention, among other benefits. It is not the free snacks in the breakroom; it is the opportunities for meaningful conversations that create outcomes.