Three ways to improve engagement in the company
For years, human resources managers and employers have searched for that formula that would allow them to better engage their employees. They tried new benefits, overhauled company culture and even supported career development. While these initiatives were not bad and completely wrong, they could not solve the problem of low employee engagement.
Recently, Quantum Workplace released a relationship (English only) in which they surveyed around 300 companies regarding their employee engagement strategy and HR priorities. Only 12% of those companies considered themselves very engaged: engaged!!! 12%!!!
But as the report turns out, all those companies had some interesting things in common.
Here are three ways many companies have been able to improve their employee engagement.
- Have an ongoing employee engagement strategy: all year round
One of the biggest differences between engaged and disengaged organizations was how they approached the topic of employee engagement and involvement. Nearly 78% of highly engaged companies conduct employee engagement initiatives year-round. In fact, 50% of disengaged companies said they only focus on engagement for a short period of time, as if the rest of the year didn’t matter. You can’t learn a new language unless you speak it often. Likewise, organizations cannot improve employee engagement unless they focus on daily improvement. A year-round engagement strategy means monitoring and tracking performance metrics regularly. And then making small adjustments iteratively.
- Follow up on employee investigations
Most organizations conduct employee surveys. However, they are only useful if you do something about it. And it means much more than creating a graph showing what percentage of employees feel engaged and presenting it to management. The results of the engagement survey will only tell you how employees feel about their jobs and for you to understand how to improve things. You’ll be happy to know that the extra effort went a long way. According to the relationship by Quantum Workpace, if a manager follows employees’ lead in the survey, then they will be 12 times more likely to be engaged the following year.
- Do without annual interviews
With companies like Adobe scrapping their Year Performance Review, business leaders are starting to realize how terrible annual reviews are. But it is the most involved organizations that understood this a long time ago. According to the relationship Quantum Workplace, 54.6% of engaged companies ensured that their managers had one-on-one conversations with their employees every 1-3 months. On the other hand, 77.8% of disengaged companies still rely on annual interviews. If you want to empower your employees to perform at their best, you need to tell them how they are doing regularly and not wait until the end of the year. This will help both you and your employees discover problems earlier and address them quickly.
If you really want to improve employee engagement you need to be more involved in the process. It means talking to employees more, understanding and analyzing their perspectives, and taking initiatives every day to incrementally improve it.
ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avallone F., Bonaretti M., Organizational Wellbeing .
University manual of Human Resources Strategy.
OD&M Consulting, Reward Systems. Design guide .
WEBGRAPHY
Quantum Workplace, Employee Engagement Trends Report.
Inail, Work-related stress (2017) .