Why is Employee Engagement so important?
You can not buy loyalty dime a dozen. You must earn it.
Engagement introduction
Competency:
Commitment:
Why is Employee Engagement so important?
Unless employees feel they are making a real contribution and finding meaning and purpose in their work at their company, they won’t be called engaged employees. Engagement exists only when employees find their personal needs are being met through their participation in their company. Here we conclude to one of the leader’s most important duties: helping employees find a sense of contribution through the work that their employees do.
So, Competency deals with the head (being able to do the work), Commitment with the hands and feet (being there and willing to do the work), and Engagement with the heart and emotions (simply being, and finding meaning and purpose in doing the work).
Benefits of Engagement:
Some of the benefits of engagement is that employees would:
- Collaborate on ideas to improve business processes, procedures, and outcomes
- Feel empowered to come up with innovative solutions to problems without being asked to do so
- Innovate, collaborate, and inspire others around them
- Are charged with positive energy, which makes them more productive
- Stay longer at their jobs, simply retention problems would be solved
- 20% or better boost to productivity and profitability (Gallup)
Quick stats about Engagement:
- 51% of employees are searching for new jobs
- Disengaged employees cost organizations up to $550 billion, Annually
- Teams that address engagement perform 20% better in sales and 10% better in customer engagement
- Companies with engaged employees see 41% less absenteeism
- 48% of employees report being unhappy at work
- Highly engaged companies see a 17% increase in productivity
Measuring Engagement:
Then, after measuring your employees’ engagement, don’t stop there, the survey is only part of the engagement strategy. Work on improving the results, which requires commitment from all, especially the CEO. Then, start by communicating the results, choose the most critical priorities to start working on to improve, and finally follow-up and repeat.
Improving Engagement:
Fairness: fairness in all aspects and disciplines of Human Resources: recruitment, training, fair pay structure, fair working conditions and job security … to mention some.
Recognition: each employee is motivated by a different way, and it is your job as a leader to find what is it for each. Employees want to know that their work is appreciated by their supervisors and known by their colleagues. Recognition and appreciation would be based on certain criteria, like what milestones have been achieved, what unexpected or exceptional results have been realized, who has gone beyond the call of duty to help a colleague or met a deadline, who has provided great service or support to a customer in crisis, who “walked the talk” on your values in a way that sets an example for others and warrants recognition …
Empowerment: Engaged employees are those who are empowered in their tasks, jobs, and make a difference in the company.
Feedback: continuous feedback, a never ending regular one-on-one feedback, and can’t stress here more the importance of this. Discuss with the employee what might make the employee’s work difficult or cumbersome, what you can do to ease the burden, what roadblocks might surface …
Provide relevance: share with the employee what we are doing as an organization and as a team, whey we are doing it, who benefits from our work and how, what success looks like for our team and for each employee, what role each employee play in delivering on that promise …
Daily, Appreciation: let the employees know you are glad they are with you on this journey to success.
Weekly, Coaching: help your employees get better at doing the jobs they need to do. Should be in a one-one-one meeting.
Quarterly, Evaluation: where does each employee stand in their role? Are they junior, close to leveling up, starting to grow worse? Quarterly, because who can remember that far back for the end of a year.
To make it even a simpler solution, you can use the management framework Objectives and Key Results, OKRs in short. The system’s benefits sums all what mentioned above and goes much beyond that.
Imagine if every employee was passionate about seeing the company and its customers succeed!
“Happy people are better workers. Those who are engaged with their jobs and colleagues work harder — and smarter.” Aimee McKee, Teleos Leadership Institute
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