By Jill Aburrow, Chartered FCIPD, PgCEL, CEO of Heartfelt HR Ltd
Employee Engagement is important for any business. It is one of the building blocks for a strong corporate culture and for success and growth.
What is employee engagement?
Engagement is the ingredient that makes your employees want to be at work. It makes employees give commitment and loyalty to their employer.
For your employees, it is the feeling of being trusted and valued by their employer. It is about understanding their job and how that fits into the overall direction of the organisation. It is the freedom to give their opinion, or raise concerns. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to act on their suggestions or even agree with them, but they need to feel that their opinions are valued and heard.
Why does employee engagement matter?
If your employees like being at work, they will be productive. They will be loyal and will do what they can to support your business. This equals growth and is likely to bring you increased profits and a more successful business.
Your people are key to business success and you need to put them at the centre of business strategy and plans. There are other things that are critical to your success but if you do not engage with your employees, you are setting your business up to fail. You risk issues like high absence and high staff turnover. You will find that your staff lack motivation and cannot interact well with your customers. They will not be creative or innovative.
How can a corporate business achieve employee engagement?
Employee engagement brings a gradual change to the culture of the organisation. It can take time to see changes, but there are things which you can do immediately.
The key is for this to be a genuine change in direction. It is no good just to pay lip-service to the idea of employee engagement. You need to cultivate a real desire and intention to engage with your employees. You need to listen to them, understand their needs, make changes as a result.
Managers in any organisation are critical to the success of employee engagement. Your managers need to buy into the change. They may need some development and skills training in how to engage with their teams.
A clear vision
Your starting point is a clear vision for your business and what you are aiming to achieve. Then communicate that to your staff. Help your employees to understand how their specific job contributes to the success of that vision. They need to be able to see that their job is important and valued by the business. This applies to every job, whatever it is. We all need to feel that we are needed and can contribute.
A key to having motivated employees is for them to feel that their views are valued. They know the job and what works – or doesn’t work. Undoubtedly, they will have views about the best way to achieve results and you need to hear what they say. They will likely have some good ideas to make positive changes in your business. If they come up with a suggestion which isn’t practical, it is fine to turn the idea down if you explain why it won’t work, or why it needs to be delayed.
Trust and Integrity – a two-way street
The final key step to an engaged workforce is potentially the most important one. It involves building an environment where there is trust between you and your staff. The business and its managers must live up to any promises. Your policies and rules must be followed – by everyone. Managers and employees alike.
Your policies and procedures must be concise, clear and easy to understand and follow. For people to abide by your policies, they need to have read them and understand them. They will only do that if each expectation is clear.
Generally, if you trust people, they will prove trustworthy and will want to live up to that trust. There will always be an exception to that – but there are ways of managing those exceptions. Just because one person has proved untrustworthy at some point – or even if you are just afraid that someone will – is no reason to stop trusting everyone.
Give people the autonomy to make their own decisions. You will be surprised at how well they respond and how soon employee engagement improves as a result. There might be mistakes, but that is how we learn.
Summing up the basics of employee engagement
The four key steps to successful employee engagement are:
Vision – Make sure you are able to communicate your corporate vision to your staff and they can see the importance of their own role in achieving that vision.
Management Skills– Your managers should be skilled in listening, empowering and supporting staff.
Listen to your employees– Have a mechanism in place for your employees to voice their ideas, concerns and suggestions. Ensure that you consider those ideas and give them proper feedback.
Trust is a two-way street– Trust your employees and make sure they can trust you. Live up to promises made. Apply rules and procedures to everyone, including managers.
If you connect with your employees and they understand their contribution to the success of your business, you will have a loyal, engaged workforce who will help you to grow your business and increase profits.
Where do you start?
A good place to start is to run an anonymous employee engagement survey, so that people feel safe to give completely honest answers. You will get some incredibly valuable information about what works and what doesn’t work in your organisation.
The key is to then produce an action plan based on the feedback and to start to make some changes. If your employees can see that their voices have been heard and you are taking action, then it will start to improving your company culture and engage with your employees.
