Employee engagement is the ability for employees to feel connected to the company they work for and the overall business. Leaders who believe in employee engagement are willing to ensure that the company culture is positive and that employees are committed to the business’s success.
1. Measuring Employee Engagement
Measuring worker engagement can be essential to improving your workforce’s overall satisfaction. It can help you identify areas of strength and weakness and help you plan how to tackle them. But it’s important to remember that survey results aren’t the only way to gauge employee engagement.
The best approaches are proactive. Identify and act on the things that disengage employees, and build relationships with your team that make them more productive.
One method of measuring employee engagement is to conduct an annual survey. Typically, surveys take employees a few minutes to complete and provide a high-level look at their engagement levels across the company.
Another popular approach is to conduct direct interviews with each employee. However, candid interviews are time-consuming and require specialist expertise. Instead, many companies outsource this service to a third party.
Another type of measurement is a culture survey. Culture surveys measure engagement by asking questions such as whether or not employees feel engaged in the work environment and their professional growth. This type of survey is a great way to get employees to speak openly about what matters to them, such as their colleagues and management.
2. Physically Engaged Employees
In a nutshell, it is the people that make or break the success of any organization. Luckily for them, there are myriad ways to engage the workforce. The key is to find out what works and what doesn’t. Using a systematic approach, you should be able to reap the benefits of a happy employee.
This is especially true when it comes to retention. You’ll be rewarded with a high-performance workforce if you can get the best and brightest to stick around. For instance, savvy employer will reward their best employees with a generous benefits package. It’s not just about providing a competitive wage; employers must also provide an enjoyable and engaging workplace. Not only will they enjoy a happier workforce, but they will also be more productive and more satisfied in general.
Several organizations have been quick to jump on the engagement train to prove the point, with many employing a mix of old-school techniques and new-fangled tricks. One way to do it right is to devise a strategic plan for each department. Likewise, they should have a system for keeping track of their best performers and weed out the bad apples before they become a problem to be avoided in the first place.
3. Creating a Positive Company Culture.
Organizational cultures affect the way an employee works and the relationships they have with co-workers. Positive work cultures improve employee engagement, reduce turnover, increase productivity and profitability, and create a sense of belonging. In contrast, negative cultures disengage workers, lower productivity, and negatively impact customer relations.
Investing in a high-performance company culture requires effective leadership. Leaders must set clear goals, communicate well, and reinforce positive behavior. They also need to be authentic.
The first step toward building a positive company culture is recognizing and rewarding employees for their performance. Recognition programs have been shown to boost morale and motivate employees to perform better in the future. Employees who feel appreciated work harder to ensure that the organization succeeds.
During a recent survey of leaders, senior leaders in several international food retailers identified key areas where they could invest in a strong workplace culture. Among the most critical factors influencing workplaces are the mission and vision, how employees are treated, and how they feel about their employer.
A healthy workplace culture includes a strong sense of community, shared values, and expectations for work. Employees who are happy at their jobs stay two times longer than those who are less satisfied.
4. Continuous Listening
Employee listening is a vital tool for any organization. It helps organizations understand how to improve employee engagement and retention. And employee-centric cultures tend to lead to lower turnover and increased innovation.
Listening to employees is a continuous process. Unlike an annual survey, you can gather feedback from employees at critical moments, like when a new management team joins or when a key initiative is being implemented. Continuous listening programs can include pulse surveys.
Pulse surveys are designed to be quick, lightweight, and repeatable. They can complement and extend engagement surveys to give you a complete picture of employee sentiment. However, these surveys may need more satisfactory results.
When conducting pulse surveys, make sure you are collecting feedback on the most critical questions. Survey fatigue can cause a dip in response rates, and the quality of results may be diluted.
Final Words
Focus groups also work well as a supplement to engagement surveys. These in-person or virtual discussions allow you to see topics generating energy. You can then follow up with employees on these issues.
The right technology can be a crucial part of any employee listening strategy. HR software is a great way to ensure you collect actionable insights. Ideally, you want to find a flexible system that allows you to focus on the “why” behind measuring concepts.
