The modern workplace is probably one of the biggest office revolutions speaking highly of employee productivity and breaking out from the conventional office scenario, thus efforts in improving employee engagement are becoming more prevalent among organizations.
Statistics show that 1 out of 3 employees is either somewhat or actively disengaged.1 This caused the world to have only 15% work-engaged employees2 and has cost the US more than $500 billion yearly, just because of nonproductivity.3 Employee disengagement is no doubt dragging and expensive for the whole organization.
Meanwhile, successfully engaging your employees begets better team performance, customer engagement, retention, and profitability (at 21%).4 Productivity also escalates to 25% when the workforce of an organization is interconnected.5
The question is, does your efforts brought you nearer to a successful employee engagement? If you are uncertain about it, here are 3 employee engagement essentials you might have missed:
Principles that are practiced
Basically, these are the core values you should have in terms of dealing with the employee. Forbes presents three major principles6 that should be top of mind of leaders and human resource people:
- Consistency – this is the assurance to certainty, primarily in guiding the workforce with the company’s movement that would eventually affect each employee. Moreover, each culture aimed to be adopted by the whole company starts with you, so setting as an example is very crucial and keeping the practice would always be a challenge. One example of this culture is a modern workplace. It should start with company leaders and trickle down to employees.
- Communication – this doesn’t just about talking for the sake communication. Unlocking what’s on the employees’ minds matters more—thus knowing their say to every initiative or policy implemented is crucial. In return, this widens your view because of the insights that could only come from their perspective.
- Combat – not with employees but with misconception. Employees cling on the clarity of what’s happening around them. If it’s not too much for you to give a thorough explanation for a company decision or regulation, give it. Once they’re clear about it, they’ll start to see the relevance of their efforts in the organization. Also, this allows you to keep employees current, excite engagement, and avoid well-being damages to employee.
Power to impact the internal and external community
You have the power to make or break the stay of employees. Their engagement can’t only be fished from their desks. You hook them from facets that solely concern their well-being and the community your company belongs to or passionate about. With this, they get the chance to employ more of their whole selves at work and make work less work. This is a well-known approach called Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR.
CSRs help embody the purpose, identity, and mission of an organization. Successful execution would go against the less than 50% of employees that feel connected to their organization’s mission7 and the fewer percentages for those who knew what their company stands for. 8
CSRs also help achieve these organizational impacts:9
- Increased organizational citizenship behaviors and improved employee relationships
- Enhanced employee identification with the organization
- Improved retention and organizational commitment
- More attractive company culture to prospective employees
- Better employee engagement and performance
- Increased creativity
Passion that is leveraged for clear career growth
Your employees are your brand ambassadors. Keeping them current with the skills and approaches in their specific positions is a must as they serve as the front-liners. Failing to do so might result to major attrition. In the UK, 74% of workers believe that they are not reaching their potential at work and seeks for more training on the job.10 Also, 40% of employees that do not get any adequate training for their jobs end up leaving their positions within a year. 11
Simply put, riding on the passion of your employees by providing the necessary training affects their work outlook and loyalty with the organization. Cultivate these passions and create competitive brand ambassadors before it’s too late.
Productivity suites that are capable
By 2025, the workforce will be comprised of 75% millennials.12 A safe measure that the evolving employee population has satisfactory to excellent knowledge of modern productivity suites that promote a cloud-first, mobile-first workplace and has more challenging standards to get their attentions.
Go with a productivity suite that doesn’t just get the job done but also fosters informative and fun platforms such as social media, data storytelling, and even polls. Chanel your employee engagement programs to these platforms, get data insights as to which works best, and improve your efforts to streamline those with the type of demographics you have in your office.
This way, you haven’t just made work lighter for employees but also assessments on your efforts fast and data-driven.
Your employees are much like your clients: they like to be involved, treated well, cultivated, and informed with what’s happening around them. Excite employee engagement with these 4 elements and build a community of professionals that would highly reflect of your company’s ideals and standards.
Want to know more approaches about employee engagement in era of digital transformation? Join us on September 26, 2018 as we gather industry experts to discuss such approaches.
Know more about the event by clicking here.
Sources:
- 2016 Steelcase Survey
- State of Global Workplace, Gallup 2017
- http://news.gallup.com/reports/178514/state-american-workplace.aspx
- State of the American Workplace, Gallup 2017
- https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-social-economy
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2014/10/27/3-principles-leaders-must-follow-to-build-employee-engagement/#78565b0e128e
- http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/194642/company-missions-not-resonating-employees.aspx
- Getting the Most Out of the Employee-Customer Encounter, Gallup 2013
- https://consciouscompanymedia.com/workplace-culture/hr-innovations/6-ways-corporate-social-responsibility-benefits-employees/
- http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/three-quarters-of-employees-want-more-training-at-work-to-fulfill-their-full-potential-middlesex-university-reports
- https://www.go2hr.ca/training-development/employee-training-is-worth-the-investment
- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2014/07/17/brookings-data-now-75-percent-of-2025-workforce-will-be-millennials/
