You used to hear them back when you were a fledgling whatever-you-are. They got thrown around a lot. They always felt, well, disingenuous. Buzzwords used to make new employees feel welcomes, like the company really, and truly cared about them. But with enough time, you realized a hard truth: you were just a cog in a very mighty machine — a machine you entirely disagreed with. It wasn’t the kind of company you wanted to work for.
Now, it’s not the kind of company you want to run.
There’s one particular Human Resources term that explains a whole lot about why you’ve felt this way in the past and why your staff might be feeling it now. It’s “employee engagement.”
Do you really know what this term means, how it affects your organization, what factors contribute to it, and how to improve it? Let’s get you up to speed so you can learn why it really matters, and how you can effectively build it up in your organization.
WHY IT MATTERS
What is employee engagement, exactly?
There have been loads of definitions over the years, starting with one from William Kahn, who kicked things off in 1990 by describing it as "the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.” But all the descriptions add up to the same basic idea.
This much-used term is essentially the net sum of an employee’s commitment to and interest in a particular job and the organization he or she works for based on a variety of factors. It’s the very real measurement of how strongly a person feels about the intangible things a job has to offer — the things beyond salary and health insurance, such as the sense of purpose he feels, and the intrinsic rewards she gets from doing the work.
Of course, there’s more to it than that, and there’s a mighty good reason we’re talking about it — one that could have a significant impact on your organization’s future.
Extrapolating the takeaways from a variety of studies, employee engagement can be a significant indicator of a company’s success, now and in the future. Simply put, companies with engaged employees do better than those whose employees have that icky, pervasive “checked out” feeling you might have seen around an office or two during your career.
Let’s put some numbers to the situation.
Organizations with more engaged employees have less attrition, a more motivated workforce, and yield higher profits. You shouldn’t need more reason than that to make it a priority.
THE DRIVERS OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Of course, you can’t just say you care about having engaged employees and call it a day. To get all these great results, it’s crucial to understand what factors will contribute to your new and improved, more engaged workforce.
According to Ivey Business Journal, after Sears Roebuck & Co. implemented a system of employee engagement measurements known as Total Performance Indicators back in 1992, they came to the following three conclusions:
An employee's understanding of how her work impacts a business’s core objectives has a positive impact on her job performance.
An employee’s attitude towards the job and the company itself is the strongest indicator of an employee’s loyalty and overall customer service.
When you improve an employee’s attitude about her job, and consequently her job performance, you increase customer satisfaction and revenue growth.
Is it really startling that how an employee feels about her role and her impact on business performance affects the bottom line? Nah. This is some pretty obvious causality.
So what, specifically, contributes to these feelings? What are the details that make a person want to check in and get cranking? Here are some of the thought bubbles you can find hovering over the heads of your happier staff members.
ALL ABOUT MILLENNIALS
Let’s look at Millennials, the newest workforce generation, defined as anyone born after 1980. Often times described as selfish and disloyal, the recent Cone Millennial Cause Study found a much more positive view about this group:
That’s right, Millenials are socially-conscious. And since someday they’re going to be your boss, it might be best to get out in front of this trend and embrace volunteerism and greater social-corporate responsibility.
HOW TO MEASURE ENGAGEMENT
There aren’t many options when it comes to measurement. Exit interviews come too late, and you’re the least qualified to know whether or not your compensation packages are satisfactory (not that that’s even a major driver of engagement anyway).
Arguably the simplest and most straightforward way to take the staff’s pulse is through employee surveys. You could go the traditional route and send out an annual employee survey. While this gives you great longitudinal data, it doesn’t give you a real-time look at engagement.
That’s why we advocate regular pulsing surveys. Sent weekly or bi-weekly, these are short, sweet, and simple. They give you regular insights into how employees feel at that point in time, giving you ample time to act before they give you their two weeks notice.
When you’re ready to get real about engagement levels by sending out your first survey, make sure you follow a few best practices:
Keep them anonymous
Keep them short (1-2 questions at most)
Keep the questions simple and straightforward
Plan to share the feedback, and act on it
Just remember, measuring engagement is only the first step. As this Blessing White study explains: “Organizations that survey their workforce without acting on the feedback appear to negatively impact engagement scores.” Measuring is the first step, but acting on that feedback is paramount for positive results.
Check out how TINYpulse client Ratio uses best practices to make their employee survey a tool for creating a happier, more engaged workforce:
UNIQUE IDEAS BEING USED TO CREATE MORE ENGAGED WORKFORCES
Do you want a more engaged workforce but don’t know where to start. We have a whole list of ideas to get you started:
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Despite all the advice on how to drum up some engagement, it’s important to remember that engagement isn’t a hack or a hoax. It’s not just a series of tricks you use to get your staff to work harder, nor should these approaches be used exclusively to improve the bottom line. True employee engagement is the result of honest care and attention — of having and being a good company and a good employer. Simply, it’s the right thing to do.
Be a good company, be a good leader, and you will see positive results in every aspect of your business. Make sure employees understand how they affect the company, how their work has an impact, what happens as a result of it, when they’ve done it well, that your relationship with them is important, and that you are focused on good communication at all times, and you will see employee engagement go through the roof, right along with customer satisfaction, employee retention, and profits.
We’ll be here to help you measure it.