Employee Engagement in the "Great Resignation"
In this current age of ‘the great resignation’, employee engagement can be a powerful tool for employers to aid in addressing retention and overall employee wellbeing. This article will discuss what exactly employee engagement is, how it can be cultivated within your organization as well as approaches to measure success and to continue to analyze the impact this leverage can have on your organization.
What is Employee Engagement? Employee engagement is a human resources concept to describe how connected an employee is to the organization. The more an employee is engaged in the company they work for, the higher their production and the better their performance can be, as they may feel increased satisfaction and a deeper level of commitment to the organization as a whole. An engaged employee cares about their work and the wellbeing of the organization they work for and therefore feel that their role makes a difference in the work that they do. Employee engagement correlates to better customer satisfaction as well as employee retention. Employee engagement isn’t synonymous with employee happiness, however. For example, a happy employee isn’t necessarily an engaged employee and vice versa. Someone can be heavily involved in the organization, but unhappy and on the opposite end of the spectrum, someone can just come in for the work that they do and not be involved in other work factors, but be really happy and satisfied in what they do. Sometimes, the two concepts can and do mesh, however, they aren’t interchangeable concepts.
Practical Engagement Ideas and Implementation:
So now that we’ve done a quick dive into what employee engagement is, let’s discuss some examples of what organizations can do to provide opportunities for engagement as well as some practical tools before getting started. I believe that the most important step before an organization gets started with implementing or increasing employee engagement is to first, know their audience. If you are the working professional tasked with employee engagement, some questions you should ask yourself are:
• What do your employees want more of?
• What is the current overall company culture?
• What are changes that your employees would like to see?
• What are overall issues that need to be addressed?
If you are promoting opportunities that don’t speak to your employees specifically and address topics and ideas directly within your organization, you’re not going to see or feel increased engagement because employees will feel the topics being introduced aren’t relevant to them.
Some ideas for taking a temperature on current topics can be, depending on the size of your organization: sending out a survey, talking to employees, or holding a meeting to discuss topics and really get a feel for what staff want. Do they want more wellness resources, lunch and socialization breaks, after-hours get-togethers, fewer meetings throughout the week, company sports teams, professional development opportunities, or mentorship opportunities? The range of ideas is huge and can focus on many different areas of engagement, from intrinsic motivation, overall employee wellness, job enrichment, professional development, and succession planning. Depending on the organization of your company, these opportunities can also include being on a board of directors, part of a decision-making team, or a shareholder’s group or other committee in charge of addressing different issues that are affecting the company and/or communities involved. If these committees don’t currently exist, maybe one is organically created upon doing this collaborative discovery work in seeking more insight about employee engagement.
Another factor to consider is budget restrictions. A catered event might not be feasible for example, but a potluck might be. Providing gym memberships to all staff might be too costly of an idea, but what about holding monthly workouts over Zoom, providing resources, encouraging movement breaks or even having a contest to encourage all staff pause and move throughout the day. Again, taking immediate action on what employees are seeking might not be a realistic option, but creating that committee that can take it from there might be, which is two-fold: addressing employee engagement and taking action on these issues. This is where groupthink is really great at coming up with creative plans to actually implement the ideas generated. They say two heads are better than one, well a group of heads can be even better.
The Value of Employee Engagement
A huge part of making employee engagement successful across your organization is having engaged leaders. The role of administration is huge in relation to employee engagement. An engaged leader speaks volumes. Ask yourself these questions about your company culture: does your leader (or company) have an open-door policy? Routine engagement with staff? What about open and honest discussions? Is work-life balance promoted or is over-time expected or even encouraged and valued? What is the culture of the organization and how is leadership showing up to the table? Do staff feel connected and safe in the current space? Addressing the overall culture first can be a really valuable starting place.
Also, making sure that the opportunities for engagement and advancement that are being provided are being given in equal access (for example, if half of the team works nights and the other half works days, you might need to consider creating something that caters to both simultaneously so no one is being left out of the opportunities being presented). It’s important to make sure equality for all staff is being considered when developing these opportunities. Alienating an entire group of employees when addressing employee matters and issues of engagement doesn’t create a positive company culture, especially if there’s already a pre-existing bias or that is an issue that needs to be addressed. This will widen the gap even more and make it even less likely that staff will be on board with changes.
Measure Success
We’ve discussed ideas of how we can cultivate engagement, let’s next discuss how this concept can be measured and how success might be quantified. The biggest component of being able to successfully measure improvement is to have an established baseline before you begin the work. Employee surveys can be a mixed bag. While they do give insight, depending on your participation rate, it might not be the most accurate representation for your organization, as it will only reflect the opinions of those who participated. Which, if employees are already feeling disengaged to begin with, then it’s hard to expect engagement about an engagement survey. I think observations and discussions can be really collaborative and informative. These would be my favorite ways to assess, although the downfalls for this method is that you don’t walk away with factual data from discussions. Maybe following up your collaborative discussion with a survey, offering a prize for completing the survey or other methods to entice further engagement. I also encourage open feedback, however, the typical responses are positive things unless there’s anonymity. The negative things tend to stay hidden from administration, as people fear retaliation or wish to avoid confrontation and difficult topics or don’t want to feel rejected for their ideas.
Continuing the Work
There’s a saying that where the energy goes, the energy flows. This means where you put your energy, that is what begins to flourish. Like a flower being given soil and water for example. In organizations however, there are three main components and these are people, process and profits. These three components rely on one another to be successful. If you are solely focused on one and ignore the other, the profits, for example, then the other components aren’t being nourished and the overall health of the atmosphere is in jeopardy.
It can be concluded that, when implemented successfully and with intention, employee engagement is a positive all around for both the organization and the individuals. When employee engagement can be leveraged, employees might begin to enjoy their roles within the company more and find more intrinsic value in the work and that energy ripples throughout the organization. The same idea can apply on the opposite end of the things, if employees don’t feel that there are enough opportunities being provided to them for engagement, they might feel less valued and therefore not put as much energy into the work that they do.
After all of this, the work is not done. Continuing the work is the most important aspect of this concept. Continuing to adapt over time with current and relevant topics, the company culture and staying connected to your employees and continually striving to be on the same wavelength. Getting involved in discussions and encouraging conversations, understanding your employees as the humans that they are, what makes them passionate and what projects they’re currently involved in. Continuing to learn and grow as leaders and actively listen and set the tone for the organization by truly being engaged yourself. If this comes from an authentic place within leadership, the results will also be authentic and invaluable. If the intentions aren’t true, employees will see through the façade and results won’t be favorable. I hope you have found something valuable with this article and hopefully something you can immediately put into use at your own organization.