Happy CAMPER:

The Six Dimensions of Employee Engagement and How to
Remember Them

If you’ve followed YCNS for a bit, you have probably heard us talk about this simple acronym before. When we talk about an engaged employee, we refer to them being a happy “CAMPER.” Yes, it’s a little bit corny but, the corniness is what makes it memorable.

There are six dimensions of engagement that get at the twelve questions in Gallup’s survey to measure employee engagement. We can easily remember the six dimensions by referring to with the acronym CAMPER.  By talking about “happy CAMPERs” we are also reminded of some tactical, specific things we can do in response to the six dimensions.

C – Communication

Just as we've stressed in many of our classes and newsletters before, communication is vital to employee engagement. Without it, things quickly fall apart. Is the information in your organization flowing effectively, from the top down and from the bottom up? Does information flow freely? Do people get a chance to hear what they need to hear and say what they need to say?

A – Autonomy
As Dan Pink points out in Drive the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, autonomy, that is the desire or the act of being self-directed, is important to establishing a sense of motivation in us. So, in your own team or within your span of control, are people able to be autonomous? Do they have the ability to direct their ‘how’, at least to a certain degree? They may not control their ‘what’, and sometimes there are some highly regulated things that limit the ‘how’, but offering them opportunities for autonomy can increase engagement.

M – Mastery
Mastery is having comprehensive knowledge or skills in a subject or accomplishment. So, what are we getting better at? As employees and as individuals we delight in seeing forward progress in our own skills. Look around your organization to make sure the employee base understands their opportunities to grow and develop themselves. Be sure they know leadership supports them through these learning opportunities. Be sure they take advantage of them, they delight in the success from those growth opportunities, and feel mastery as they do.

P – Purpose
The purpose within our organizations is helping make sure every single individual understands how their job or their role is aligned to the good of the organization, and, perhaps even more importantly, how the organization is serving a higher purpose, a transcendent purpose, or a purpose that would get us out of bed in the morning. This purpose is what motivates us to want to contribute. Take a look at your organizational purpose and explore how you can talk about that more with your team.

E – Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm, even in the dark moments, the busy seasons, and the painfully lean times, is our ability to look each other in the eye and have a little bit of fun. Enthusiasm is smiling at coworkers in the hallway and engaging in genuine conversation with them. Enthusiasm is intentionally encouraging and connecting with those around us. Enthusiastic employees are engaged employees, so create enthusiasm today. 

R – Relationships
Gallup talks about the importance of having friends at work and knowing that our leaders care about us. That personal connection, that idea of a relationship at work, is really important to us, even for those who say they "just" go to work to collect a paycheck. Our effectiveness, our happiness, and not surprisingly, our engagement all increases when we have a colleague or coworker we can connect with at work.

So, there’s a quick crash course on “CAMPER”, what each of those letters mean, and what to do about them in your workplace.

Here at Your Clear Next Step, we are happy to help you with this!

We offer employee engagement surveys based on the 12 Gallup questions, we help build training for leaders to detect the six dimensions, and we offer workshops for individual contributors, team members, and leaders to better understand and build each other’s sense of being a ‘happy CAMPER’ in the workplace.

Let us know how we can help your team!

As we’ve said before, we care about employee engagement so much, that we have a bit more to say about it. Keep reading our newsletter over the next couple weeks for more tips and info about helping others and helping yourself with low engagement.