Why engage employees

Employee engagement has also become synonymous with concepts like employee satisfaction and the employee experience , which is more about the complete employee journey from hiring to when they leave their job. Employee communication remains the most essential tool to develop strong working relationships among employees and achieve higher productivity rates.

Companies that offer clear, precise communication can swiftly build trust among employees. In recent years, studies about the neuroscience of trust have proven this. Often, companies miss the core issues related to employee engagement because executives assume engagement is directly linked to salary and compensation.

Most leaders figure employees leave the company due to the lack of promotional opportunities or the lure of better job packages elsewhere. Connection, communication, and engagement are the three most vital aspects for the growth of an organization, both internally and externally. However, a study conducted by the MSW Research and Dale Carnegie Training contradicted this particular theory, stating that, apart from just money, three other, strong and more important factors directly impact employee engagement.

These include:. Of these three factors, it turns out cultivating work relationships through proper, clear, and open communication is the core of improving engagement. A fact that every Human Resource manager must take note of. Why do most engagement strategies and initiatives fail? Usually, they are designed to develop internal communication and employee commitment in generic ways rather than cultivating multidimensional lines of communication between and among employees.

An Employee Benefits News study conducted in on employee benefits found that most of the reasons cited by the 34, respondents about changing jobs were due to unsatisfactory conditions in terms of. If you want high levels of involvement, motivation, trust, commitment, and empowerment, invest your efforts in improving employee communication. For large companies, ensuring employees are aligned with the changing priorities of the business is also vital. This is precisely why internal communication is even more essential today.

If employees lack relevant, accurate, engaging information and instruction, how can you expect them to do their jobs well much less be excited about their work? With proper communication, employees will minimize the time and resources they might otherwise waste. Communication is also key to setting clear expectations. Communication in this area helps them prioritize tasks and plan their workdays efficiently.

Encouraging proper employee communication can build a strong bond between your company and your employees. They are then enthusiastic about doing better and becoming more engaged in every aspect of their jobs. Why should you care? In short, highly engaged business units are more productive, profitable and likely to retain their top talent than companies with low levels of employee engagement.

To further illustrate the positive impact employee engagement can have on your business, take a look at this statistic below. Not only that, low employee engagement will cost you money. Now that you understand the benefits of a highly engaged workforce, you can work to effectively engage your employees with these 8 tips below. Prioritizing employee engagement means investing in your team members, which will help you improve retention and attendance.

Creating a company culture welcoming of all individuals is crucial to engaging your employees. By celebrating diversity and making inclusivity a central part of your office environment, you send an overwhelmingly supportive message to your employees -- leadership values individuality and wants employees to flourish, both as people and professionals.

Having confidence in the leadership team plays a large role in engaging employees. In fact, almost two-thirds of employees report having trust in senior management as key to their satisfaction. People want leaders they can count on to guide the company forward, and they want to know that their efforts are making an impact.

Include employees in conversations about strategy development, market growth and any setbacks your team may experience. The team at Optimizely makes a point to keep all employees in the loop. At Optimizely, there are no closed doors to making an impact. Employees are more likely to engage with their jobs if they feel a connection to the people around them. As HR professionals consider adopting or modifying practices or initiatives to increase employee engagement, they should:.

HR practices have a significant impact on employee engagement. The following practices can increase employee engagement:. Targeted communication initiatives can enable managers and HR professionals to stay on top of employee engagement issues, get ongoing feedback from employees and anticipate changing needs of workgroups. Managers and HR professionals should take advantage of opportunities to engage employees and should use varied communication methods to do so.

Employers have numerous opportunities for "engageable moments," when they can motivate and provide direction for employees. Watson Wyatt's WorkUSA report identified the following formal and informal "engageable moment" opportunities: 4.

The size, composition and expected reaction of the target group of employees should dictate the type of communication used for engagement activities.

Some of the communication methods HR professionals and managers can use include:. Many organizations conduct workforce surveys to measure levels of employee engagement within the organization and to analyze the relationships between employee engagement and key business outcomes.

The results of such surveys can identify which engagement initiatives are achieving desired goals. Surveys can be helpful in gauging levels of employee engagement, but employers need to realize that employee engagement surveys differ from other employee surveys. For the best results, employers should create an overall engagement strategy that goes beyond simply measuring engagement scores. Ideally, an employee engagement strategy should be created before an engagement survey is administered.

An effective plan will detail these five components:. Employee engagement surveys have a different focus than other types of employee surveys. While employee opinion and satisfaction surveys measure workers' views, attitudes and perceptions of their organization, and an employee culture survey measures employees' points of view to assess whether they align with the organization or its departments, engagement surveys measure employees' commitment, motivation, sense of purpose and passion for their work and the organization.

When developing employee engagement surveys, organizations should consider the following guidelines:. After an employee engagement survey has been administered, survey data should be reviewed in aggregate and broken down for each business unit to allow individual managers to make changes that will truly affect engagement levels.

Some experts also advocate having line managers communicate survey results to their own employees and create action plans to respond to survey recommendations. In addition, the organization may require that all employees have engagement objectives in their performance reviews so that engagement goals are developed both from the top down and from the bottom up.

Common missteps that organizations make with engagement surveys are failing to gain senior management commitment to act on survey results and failing to use focus groups to delve into the root of negative scores or comments. To avoid those mistakes, organizations should:. The factors that drive employees to be engaged in their work vary not only from country to country but also by industry sector and within companies.

Consequently, organizations that are expanding globally need to be aware of what engages their workforce in different global locations. State of the American Workplace. The Six Forces Driving Engagement. The "what" and "why" of employee engagement. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Reuse Permissions. Page Content. Overview The term employee engagement relates to the level of an employee's commitment and connection to an organization.

This article discusses: The business case in support of employee engagement initiatives. The nature and drivers of employee engagement. The roles of HR and management in engaging employees. Guidelines for developing effective employee engagement initiatives and engagement surveys.

HR practices that can increase engagement. Communications opportunities and methods for engaging employees. Global issues related to employee engagement. They involve themselves with the company. We all know that hiring new employees costs time and money. This works in two ways. When employees leave a company, the cost of hiring and training a new employee is high.

Another situation is when an existing employee does his work halfheartedly but still takes the fat paycheck. Engagement levels increase when employees are intrinsically motivated. They do it because they enjoy their work. Their work fulfills them internally.

It aligns with their beliefs and aspirations. Therefore, engaged employees are mostly intrinsically motivated. They share an emotional connection with their work. This article is written by Shreya Dutta who is a content writer and marketer at Vantage Circle. She is passionate about all things literature and entrepreneurship. To get in touch, reach out to editor vantagecircle. We safeguard your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Book Your Seat. Bookmarks You haven't yet saved any bookmarks.

Last Updated on 17 September The Benefits of Employee Engagement Below mentioned are some benefits of employee engagement that are effective and actually work. Benefit 5: Lowers Absenteeism A couple of absences are appropriate- sickness, unforeseen events.

Benefit 6: Makes them Loyal Source: Unsplash A long term benefit of keeping employees engaged is that it makes them loyal.

Benefit 7: Better Quality of work Employees who feel engaged always put in their best while doing something. Benefit 8: Employees Work Harder These employees work harder than others. Benefit 9: Positive Vibes Source: Unsplash Highly engaged employees bring spirit and energy to the workplace.