Among employees’ priorities today are involvement at the workplace, enthusiasm about the job, a sense of belonging, and flexible schedules and work arrangements in general. According to a survey by Global Human Capital Trends, the most essential factor is belonging. Just under 80% of survey respondents said that a sense of belonging at the workplace was key to their company’s success in the next year and a half. Most respondents agreed that a sense of belonging strongly predicted performance.
Benefits of employee engagement
High employee engagement has a host of benefits, including rising productivity, lower turnover, improved performance, more recruiting success, and even increased profit.
Concrete employee engagement data can be measured using a time card calculator. This simple tool will help you identify work-time patterns, track performance, and improve scheduling and productivity. It can deliver useful insight to make essential decisions, such as changing schedules to improve efficiency or hire additional employees.
Apart from having concrete data, one can sense the presence or absence of employee engagement. A team can be cohesive, but one can feel something is amiss if engagement and trust are low. What’s more, poor engagement is becoming a substantial concern. According to Gallup data, the percentage of engaged employees was 36% in 2020, but it was down to 32% in 2022. This means fewer than a third of employees working for organizations are now engaged. Almost a fifth say they are disengaged, which represents an increase from 2021.
Employee engagement takes an active effort to achieve and work to sustain. It begins with the corporate principles and goals employees are asked to embrace.
Setting goals as a precursor to engagement
In the absence of concrete goals, engagement is understandably low. Leaders must set goals and communicate them to their employees. This may sound simple, but it isn’t. The goal should be reasonable and achievable, not merely communicated. It also needs to be justified. If the leaders cannot justify the goals they expect employees to achieve, they are crafting a recipe for failure. They need a solid plan to achieve justifiable goals as well. It’s not simple at all.
Communicate and commit
Data on poor employee engagement present an opportunity and a clear call to action. Going through a rough patch can make room for excellent prospects. If you don’t know where to start, ask your employees to express their problems. They might provide reasons for their poor engagement and present them as a clear problem to be solved. When you communicate with your team, you are engaging them, plain and simple. Eventually, you will bring the focus to tangible actions and improvement priorities.
Managers can use employee feedback to set priorities and goals. Narrowing down the focus can let them identify concrete areas in which to innovate and dedicate resources. Ultimately, the goal can be improving customer service, driving profit or removing friction from internal processes.
As employee engagement increases, you will start seeing other benefits, especially better individual, team, and company performance, which will hopefully translate to better financial results.
Principles
Corporate principles should complement corporate goals. If they do not, employee engagement is likely to suffer. Principles are also referred to as company values, management style, or corporate culture. While these things aren’t the same, there is a strong overlap between them. Whichever way you express it, sticking to company principles is crucial to positive changes in the work environment.
Employee engagement is directly proportional to recognition. Employees should receive rewards for their contributions to the company. You should state the principles explicitly. Your team’s commitment to the company is contingent upon the sum of everyone’s experiences there.