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Definition of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement refers to how employees view their company. A highly engaged employee is likely to remain at the organisation in the long term, whilst a disengaged employee could disrupt the company and cause a negative workplace culture.
Engaged employees are happier, healthier, and have higher levels of trust, loyalty and productivity. Engaged employees are also more likely to offer discretionary effort than disengaged employees. Employee engagement is key to employee safety, since it has been proven that engaged employees suffer fewer safety incidents at work. Having engaged employees is vital for company success. There are several elements that come into play when assessing and improving employee engagement.
JOB SATISFACTION LEADS TO ENGAGED EMPLOYEES
Companies should strive to improve job satisfaction to enable engaged employees. Here are ways that job satisfaction, and hence employee engagement can be measured.
Company Culture
Workplace culture directly contributes towards employee satisfaction, research shows, and therefore also to organizational success. If employees feel valued within their company, by co workers, direct supervisors, HR leaders and senior leadership, this leads to improved employee experience and is one of the key drivers of employee engagement.
Poor company culture can make employees feel demotivated and therefore can decrease emotional commitment and employee performance.
Consequently, HR professionals must continually monitor company culture to help the organization achieve a high performing workforce. This can either be done through employee surveys, which have been shown to be inaccurate, or using a software such as ELEFense, that monitors departmental culture and company values in real time to enable success of the entire organization.
ELEFense can also monitor toxicity and safety incidents within the company, allowing for continuous improvement in employee engagement, since a toxic work environment decreases employee engagement.
Using Employee Engagement Software
Whilst employee feedback using employee engagement surveys is a useful tool, an employee engagement software enables companies to measure employee engagement.
ELEFense can be used to measure employee engagement, as well as company culture, and can provide suggestions of employee engagement initiatives.
Employee Feedback
Regular employee feedback using an employee engagement survey is important in maintaining employee engagement, as well as enabling companies to increase employee engagement.
Senior leaders and HR leaders must ensure they act on feedback from employee engagement surveys to implement employee engagement initiatives.
Business Outcomes
If a business is performing well, this is reflective of employee happiness and employee engagement. This is because disengaged employees do not perform to their highest standards and higher employee engagement leads to higher employee retention. An engaged employee is motivated and driven and this is shown by better business outcomes.
Key performance indicators are a useful way to measure an organization's success and therefore employee engagement.
Customer satisfaction is also reflective of employee engagement, since highly engaged employees perform well and can provide excellent customer service.
Employee Engagement Initiatives To Drive Employee Engagement
These initiatives can be implemented by HR professionals or senior management in order to improve employee satisfaction which in turn will improve employee engagement. Companies should create an employee engagement strategy to drive employee engagement. Here are some examples of potential employee engagement strategies:
Professional Development Programs
Helping employees develop their skills and learn enables greater career development and continuous improvement of employees. These programs should be tailored to individual employees to allow them to take personal interest, improving employee experience and making employees feel listened to. These programs can also promote knowledge sharing, to encourage team building, which would lead to further employee engagement.
Employee Benefits
Implementing employee benefits drives employee engagement since they help employees feel valued within their organization. Senior leaders should utilise employee surveys to decide which benefits would engage employees the most.
Welcoming New Hires
Ensuring that the hiring process is as seamless and easy for candidates as possible creates a good employee experience from Day 1. The onboarding process for new hires should be welcoming and should strive to incorporate employees within the team. This onboarding process should include frequent conversations between new hires and their direct supervisors, as well as knowledge sharing from fellow team members. This will ensure greater employee engagement during their time at the company.
Inspire Employees
Bring in speakers to motivate and inspire employees, to foster employee engagement. Speakers can promote a greater work life balance and can bring the entire organization together in a discussion. This can promote a better workplace culture through improving employee experience on a day-to-day basis, as well as encouraging career development.
Frequent Conversations With Employees
Employee engagement research shows that conversations between employees and senior leadership or HR leaders keeps employees engaged. These conversations should discuss employee wellbeing, including their work life balance, to demonstrate to employees that senior leaders care about them. This will lead to highly engaged employees and better business outcomes.
Company Charity Initiatives
Social responsibility plays an important role in creating a good culture and team volunteering or fundraising can also help to build strong teams and improve employee engagement. It helps develop emotional commitment to the wider community, and allows employees to feel part of something bigger, helping employee engagement.
Reward High Performing Employees
Key milestones should be celebrated for individual employees to demonstrate their value to the company. This increases employee engagement and discretionary effort as employees strive to reach these milestones. These increased engagement efforts will create continuous improvement in business outcomes.
Conclusion
Overall, companies can keep employees engaged through using the above drivers of employee engagement. This improvement in employee engagement will lead to better employee experience, increasing employee retention. This will enable greater success within organisations.
