Many employers now recognise the importance of employee engagement and how essential high employee engagement is to boost the bottom line. Engaged employees are the ones who do things that are necessary to keep business moving, even if those things are not in their job descriptions. They are the workers who give all their mental, emotional and physical resources to do the best job that they can in all circumstances, and they are also the people who act as cheerleaders for the business, always doing their best to promote the vision and objectives of their employer. The scientific evidence shows that higher levels of employee engagement are associated with lower staff absenteeism, reduced costs, better quality outputs, greater growth in sales, increased turnover per staff member, and higher profitability.
Ultimately, employee engagement comes down to how employees think and feel about their employer and their job, so engagement is about creating the right environment and ensuring that all the correct psychological factors are in place. Perhaps the most important psychological consideration is a sense of meaning because people want there to be a purpose to their work, they want to know that they are involved in achieving something that has importance to other people and the wider community. Employees also want to know that they are valued and respected, they want the psychological security of knowing that their organisation cares for them and wants to support and develop them in the longer term. Lastly, workers want the psychological boost that comes with recognition and reward for their input. This means there are some relatively simple things that you can do now to improve engagement in your workplace.
Improving the quality of hiring and onboarding processes can have a major positive impact on engagement. This means attracting the right people and being honest about what the company is offering potential employees. It is important to hire people who have the correct skills for a job, but it’s also important to think about their future potential and where they may be in five or ten years. As part of the hiring process potential employees should meet the people they will be expected to work with so they and their future colleagues are happy that they will fit into the company.
Orientation should begin as soon as the job offer is accepted, ideally with an information pack and opportunities to get to know more about the organisation and workmates before the first official day of employment. Onboarding should not be a basic tick-box exercise, it should be an immersion into the culture, objectives and opportunities that make the company unique and that inspire the new employee with a shared vision.
Most people leave bad managers, not bad companies, so encouraging inspirational leadership at every level is essential to fostering employee engagement. An effective leader is able to motivate people through a sense of shared purpose and the importance of achieving mutual goals. This means understanding why whatever the organisation does is significant and showing every employee how they play a vital part in achieving its goals.
Alongside good personal leadership, the company needs to communicate clearly with everybody so that they feel part of the overall organisation. Senior executives need to be honest about how the business is doing, what is going well and what is not so well, and then be clear about what needs to be done to make things better. Employees will only be engaged they can see how their personal contribution has meaning within the bigger organisation.
It’s a truism that healthy people are happy and happy people are productive. Promoting employee well-being increase employee engagement because it shows the organisation genuinely cares about its workers. I’ve written several articles on how to improve employee well-being and a quick search of Business Today will show just how easy it can be to improve well-being.
Give employees a voice and listen to what they say. In almost every case the people doing a job are in the best position to explain what they need to get the job done and how they could do the job better. Any employee feedback is useful, but employees will only be engaged if they can see that their feedback is being taken seriously. This does not mean that companies must act on every single employee’s view, but it should mean that leaders at all levels of the business acknowledge the views that have been expressed and explain how those views have figured in decision-making.
Everyone expects to be rewarded for their effort and ensuring that people are rewarded fairly is essential to maintaining high employee engagement. Rewards don’t necessarily need to come in the form of cash because public praise or recognition for tasks well done is a great way to make people feel valued. Public recognition is also a way to ensure that when people are rewarded financially, everybody else in the business knows on what basis those rewards are being given and this will help to reduce resentment and make it clear what individuals need to do to succeed.
By Professor Hew Gill, Associate Provost, Sunway University
