Why is employee engagement important and how to drive it?
Added: (Fri Sep 06 2019)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Employee engagement is the degree to which employees are aligned to the goals and objectives of an organization, feel a sense of belonging, are an organization’s best advocates, and go above and beyond to contribute towards achieving the organization’s goals. Engaged employees are key to any organization’s smooth and efficient operations.
Employee engagement in today’s day and age is important, especially with the changing nature of jobs and the workforce. Jobs are mobile now, you have a mix of permanent and contractual employees, and there are more millennials and GenerationZ employees in the team than ever. Before we look at how we can drive effective employee engagement, let’s look at some of the benefits.
• High productivity
Engaged employees, as opposed to disengaged ones, are highly productive, proactive, work better in teams, and contribute heavily towards achieving business goals. Not only is their own productivity high, when working in teams, but they can also drive up the team’s productivity.
• Outperform competitor
Engaged employees are always raring to go, which is crucial when it comes to scaling your business, entering new markets, improving existing processes, addressing challenges, and hitting revenue goals. Employees aligned with organizational goals make conscious efforts towards realizing them, thinking of means to achieve these goals.
• Better team dynamics
They make for better team players, aid their colleagues when stuck, and improve the team’s productivity. Their team’s performance is equally important to them, making them good teammates and mentors.
• Reduce employee turnover
Engaged employees stick with organizations for longer durations, they are not interested in personal growth alone and really care about the organization’s growth. High attrition rates plague all organizations, it is now quite a concern for many organizations, considering the dynamic nature of today’s workforce.
How to drive employee engagement?
• Measure it regularly
Knowing your employees are engaged is just not enough. There are several things that can and will affect engagement, this can be role transitions, management changes, strategy deviations, among others. While conducting exercises to check engagement regularly is advised, measuring it is highly recommended. It should be part of your core HR strategy, using people analytics to bring about positive changes.
• Mean it and act on it
While many organizations talk about employee engagement, they fail to act on it. HR, along with managers and department heads, needs to drive it. This is a continual process and needs frequent attention. The rewards or changes may not be immediate but are definite and positive.
• Rewards and recognition
Some organizations do annual awards and that’s pretty much that happens throughout the year. While it’s good to reward your top performers, it's also crucial to recognize and celebrate many small achievements. This could be a customer appreciation email, or reduced turnaround time for a query resolution, this helps uplift the morale and lets them their efforts are being noticed, no matter how small.
• Be a good listener
Some organizations see employees and managers meeting each other only once a year, during appraisals. This creates a lot of issues, there are many things to be discussed for the entire in a limited duration. Organizations need to implement practices that encourage frequent check-ins, both with Managers and HR reps. These one-on-ones can be as short as 15 minutes if done regularly.
• Gamification
Introduce games, competitions that bring about the excitement in the employees’ otherwise work loaded days, this can be via small initiatives or org-wide events such as techathons. Involving department heads and managers is a great way of getting new ideas.
Employee engagement should be a huge part of your long-time HR strategy and should involve all the departments. How is your organization driving employee engagement? We would love to hear from you.