How Employee Engagement will help your company succeed

Employee engagement is much more than just having employees who are happy and satisfied with their work. It’s also about an emotional and trusting relationship between the employer and employee. When this is achieved, you’ll find your employees will have complete dedication to their work and the company’s success.

Some of the benefits of high employee engagement are:

• Increased Performance
• Improved Customer Experience, and
• Retention of Great Talent.

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person — not just an employee — are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” — Anne Mulcahy

Your first step to achieving high employee engagement, would be to measure your current employee engagement health status. This can be done with a simple Engagement Pulse Survey.

Your second step will be to purposefully act upon the feedback that is received from your employees.

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” — Stephen R. Covey

Once you’ve run the Pulse and you’ve implemented changes, how will you know whether you have a group of highly engaged employees?

• You’ll start seeing greater collaboration and employees that feel safe to speak up and respectively challenge decisions or company strategy.
• You will also notice increased trust in the office and stronger personal relationships amongst co-workers and managers.

In order to achieve the points listed, there are three key areas you need to focus on, namely: Culture, developing great leaders and investing in your people.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What does that even mean? Well, let me tell you.

Organisations that focus on their culture ensure that their employees are inspired by what they do and know what their purpose is in the company.

They also feel safe to speak up and challenge decisions that are made in the company and have a belief that changes will be made based on their answers in the latest survey.

Leaders are developed by trusting your employees to make the right calls and avoid blaming employees for mistakes that are made and instead, treat mistakes as learning opportunities.

Investing in your people may seem like a no-brainer, but more often than not this gets overlooked. Offer training and provide the resources necessary that aid your employees’ ability to do their job better and to grow, either in their current role or within the company itself.

Lastly, one of the best ways to ensure that you have highly engaged employees is to recognise the great work that they do. Mary Kay Ash said it best,

“Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret.”

‍But why do I need to recognise the work my employees or co-workers are doing?

I’m glad you asked 😊 Giving recognition is one of the simplest ways to improve engagement, motivation, employee retention & happiness and it builds a stronger, more open relationship between managers and co-workers. Give this article on recognition a read if you are interested in some steps on how to go about this.