The current state of unemployment in North America is at a 49-year low of about 4% in both Canada and the US. What this means is that employees and job seekers now have the upper hand when both looking for a job and evaluating whether to stay in one. This shouldn’t be scary thought for employers though, if they are actively investing in their talent’s growth and development and recognizing them for their good work. This blog will seek to show the link between investing in your relationship with your employees through recognition, rewards and development and how that investment can affect your overall business results.
Stay Woke with Engaged Employees
Gallup’s State of the Workplace report found that, “85% of adults worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged,” (Gallup 2018). The general population is really waking up to the possibilities of new and innovative ways of thinking about work and workplace perks and benefits. Employees are no longer settling for jobs, and they certainly will not stay in a job long term if they’re not feeling recognized for their contribution and given opportunities to grow.
If you want to attract and retain the best people, you must invest in them by investing in their relationship to their work, their leaders, and your company.
Engaged Employees’ Effect on Business Results
A recent HR.com report found major links between employee engagement and discretionary effort, productivity and performance. Engaged workplaces are associated with positive business outcomes including higher profitability, increased productivity, increased retention and better customer perceptions (HR.com 2018).
The report showed that engagement has the biggest impact on customer service and productivity. When you think about it, this makes sense because if you are not enabling your people (especially front-line workers) with skills/training and encouragement they are not able to put forth their best effort with your customer. What is happening on the inside of your company can be felt on the outside by your customers. If you would like to read more about why you should invest in your front-line workers with engagement, check out our blog on how Customer Experiences and Interactions Mirror Employee Interactions.
It’s All About Relationships
The thing that has the biggest impact on driving employee engagement is leadership and culture. Unfortunately, a lack of commitment to employee engagement at the senior level can have dire results for the state of your workplace. The Hr.com report found that, “only 40% of employees say their senior leadership invests in engagement, and only 28% said their managers were highly skilled at fostering engaged individuals and teams” (Hr.com 2018). Investing in your employees’ relationships to their direct supervisors, leadership and the workplace culture can reap huge rewards on their levels of engagement (and therefore your business results). Find out more about how to Focus on Your Employees for Exceptional Business Outcomes.
How To Improve Employee Engagement
There are many things you can do to engage your employees. So many in fact that it can seem overwhelming. The approach for each organization may be different, based on your existing company culture and what areas you need to improve. To keep is simple, below are the 4 basic ways you can evaluate and address your employee engagement needs. Once you have taken the time to identify the blind spots in your organization, you can develop a personalized employee engagement strategy and program that will help drive your unique business goals and objectives.
Listen
Listen to what your employees are telling you they want. This might take the form of employee engagement surveys, interviews, informal or formal meetings and reviews. The approach to listening to your employees will depend on your company size, culture and resources.
Goal: Determine what your employees want and the areas you should improve in.
Remove Obstacles
This is the time to evaluate your existing policies and procedures and whether they serve your larger company goals, objectives and culture.
Goal: To improve communication and culture, and streamline internal and external processes.
Develop
Give your employees many opportunities to learn and grow. Give them training, one-on-one coaching, and mentor and leadership opportunities.
Goal: To enable your talent with skills while empowering and engaging them to continuously improve themselves and their contribution to your organization.
Praise and Reward
Recognize your talent for their good work at every touch point. This can be with information recognition, peer recognition, and formal recognition and rewards programs.
Goal: To acknowledge your talent for their contribution to your company, set expectations for performance and recognize when they meet and exceed those expectations.
The Solution: Total Recognition
A total recognition program is a great solution to link your various forms of recognition, engagement and learning into one easy-to-use platform. It’s also an amazing way to keep recognition and engagement top of mind in your workplace by having an establish way for your leaders to recognize your talent at every touch point from onboarding, career milestones, birthdays, learning and development, and specific engagement campaigns. You can create fun and interactive engagement campaigns to get your employees excited with some fun and friendly competition. Senior leaders can acknowledge and reward exceptional behaviour and service, while peers can also recognize one another for contributing valued behaviours to the organization. A total recognition program is the best way to establish a culture of engagement at your organization.
If you would like more information on our Total Recognition or Custom Learning programs at Global Engagement Solutions you can visit our site at www.globalengagementsolutions.com or get in touch at jenn@globalengagementsolutions.com or 1.855.231.8407.