Employee Engagement Strategies: Why You Need Focus On Engagement
Employee engagement strategies — Striking fear in the heart of HR and organizations since…well… forever!
An organization can have a great product that meets the needs of its customers, but if it’s constantly dealing with low engagement, they’re not reaching their full potential. By focusing on employee engagement strategies, your organization will be able to reach its full potential.
This article will tackle the following:
- The impact of low employee engagement.
- The differences in engaged, unengaged, and disengaged employees.
- The reasons for low employee engagement.
- What organizations get wrong about employee engagement.
- Three quick ways organizations can boost employee engagement.
1. The Impact Of Low Employee Engagement.
Here are some select stats from the following article — Show Me the Money: The ROI of Employee Engagement
- Organizations in the bottom quartile of engagement scores experience 41% higher turnover.
- Companies with low engagement scores earn an operating income 32.7 percent lower than companies with more engaged employees.
- A disengaged employee costs an organization approximately $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary.
- Disengaged employees cost the American economy up to $350 billion per year due to lost productivity.
Three Hundred and Fifty BILLION dollars! When you Google 350 billion dollars, these results turn up:
Note that $350 billion is just for the North American economy, where engagement rates are higher than internationally. Engagement rates are at about 30% in North America, as opposed to around 10% worldwide.
When you’re constantly dealing with turnover, recruiting, retention, onboarding, or shaking your fists to the engagement gods as another great employee leaves, you’re making life difficult for yourself and for your organization. It’s a sign that you need to spend some time working on your employee engagement strategies.
2. The Differences In Engaged, Unengaged, And Disengaged Employees.
Before discussing reasons why employees are not engaged and how some employee engagement strategies don’t help, it’s important to distinguish the difference between engaged, unengaged, and disengaged employees.
This comes from Gallup — Five Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Now.
The Engaged employee:
They’re the go-getters. They are committed to the company and enjoy their work. They don’t twiddle their thumbs and wait around to do what they are told — they make things happen. It’s a huge blow if you have engaged employees leave.
And no, employees who are acting like robots and always towing the company line to appease their bosses isn’t an engaged employee. They’re just someone who wants to ensure they still have a job so they can pay off the mortgage.
The Unengaged Employee:
Sleepwalking through their role. In and out for the paycheque.
That said, if the right conditions pop up, they can become engaged. Think of them like lightbulbs that just need to be switched on. With some tweaking of your employee engagement strategies, you can bump them into the engaged employee category.
The Disengaged Employee:
They undermine others, and the organization. They don’t care how the organization is doing.
The classic example here that we’re likely as familiar with is Peter Gibbons, the main character of Office Space.
3. The Reasons For Low Employee Engagement.
You’re likely making a list of people at your organization that fall under either engaged, disengaged, or unengaged. You’re probably asking yourself:
“Why are people are not engaged at work?”
Back to the stats!
Here is a great article that collects a number of reasons employees are not engaged:
Why Your Employees Are Just Not That Into You
- Only 37% of employees understand what their employers are trying to achieve and why.
- Only 20% of employees see how their contribution adds to their employer’s goals.
- Employees aren’t given a reason to care about contributing.
- Management doesn’t know how to connect with employees.
- Employees don’t receive recognition, or even a simple thanks from their bosses or management.
None of these should come as a surprise to you.
4. What Companies Get Wrong In Regards To Their Employee Engagement Strategies.
Now that we’ve discussed the impacts of low engagement, and the reasons why it occurs, we can look at ways that some organizations try to address employee engagement, and why the approach is flawed. These are part of many organization’s employee engagement strategies, but fail to drive engagement.
1. Benefits And Perks
One of the most common employee engagement strategies is that organizations think offering the best perks and benefits will take care of their employee engagement woes.
Can this help? Absolutely.
However, it’s not the golden ticket that many organizations think it is. It’s a band-aid solution to a wound. Sure, it’s better than nothing, but it’s not going to heal that wound.
In a world that’s increasingly giving less and less to employees, it is nice to see organizations make more offerings, like flexible hours, remote-work, or dog-friendly offices. Score one for the people!
Sadly, a lot of organizations think that is all they need to do to create engagement.
That is simply not enough. Your employee engagement strategies needs to go beyond this point.
2. Employee Engagement Surveys And A Lack Of Action
When was the last time you did an engagement survey?
Did you feel that your feedback was taken into consideration?
No?
You’re not alone.
Plenty of organizations will collect engagement surveys, and that’s it. What about the feedback? Who cares! We’ve shown that we care, and taken action to collect the feedback! It’s a tool they can have in their employee engagement strategies tool-book, without really understanding why it’s not working.
Sadly, this happens all too often. I’ve done surveys and never heard anything about collective feedback afterwards. I’m sure you’ve done a survey that seemed to disappear into the void.
Or even worse, you’re one of those who collected the feedback, washed your hands clean of it, and did nothing with it. Shame on you!
Think of these surveys like going to the Doctor. It’s great to get a regular checkup, and a recommendation on what to do. Maybe you cut back on cholesterol, or do more exercise.
You can’t just go, “Well, I’ve been to the Doctor, that’s good enough! Forget the feedback and advice they had for me to improve my health.”
That would be silly, right? Why even bother going to the Doctor in the first place if you’re not going to do anything with it?
Sadly, that’s what most organizations do. They simply don’t bother. So why not employees?
5. Three Quick Ways Organizations Can Boost Their Employee Engagement Strategies.
So far, we’ve taken a look at the impact of low engagement, why employees can be unengaged, and how organizations try to boost engagement and why their approach to these employee engagement strategies are not effective.
Let’s look at some things you can do to help boost employee engagement, and produce results that last.
1. Actually Doing Something With Engagement Surveys
As I mentioned earlier, it’s all too common to collect engagement surveys, and do nothing with them. I know someone who runs a software company for engagement surveys, and likes to say that most data just sits on the shelf.
In that case, get up, walk over to that shelf, and start looking through the data.
You may be shocked, saddened, and surprised with what you see. Feedback hurts.
Feedback sucks, but instructs.
It’s going to improve your organization if you address it.
Do try to do them more often, instead of once every solar eclipse. Show employees that you understand concerns, and work towards addressing them.
What you can do now: Take some time to go through engagement surveys. Do you not have access to them? Find someone who is, and see if they can give you access.
2. Be Crystal Clear On The Whys Of Your Organization
As mentioned earlier in the article, many employees don’t understand the goals of the organization. I understand it can be tough when you’re 30 000 people spanning the globe, but you’d be surprised at how even an organization as small as 10 people can have many different ideas of what the goals are.
I worked at an organization before, that at around 60 people, definitely had many ideas of what the goals of the organization were. That said, there was a BHAG in place that made it easier, and everyone could agree on that.
What you can do now: Go around and ask people what they think the goals of the company are, values, mission statements, etc. If you’re getting significantly different answers, then something needs to change.
3. Show Employees That Their Works Matters
I can recall some times in the past where good bosses said “thanks, this is great work”, and even something as simple as that made such a difference in how I felt about my work and the organization.
You don’t need to go overboard, throw them a party, and get them cake (although I’m sure most people wouldn’t be against cake). Even something as simple as an email, a pat on the back, can go a long way.
When writing this point, I thought of this scene from The Wire (the greatest show ever made…after The Sopranos…I think…).
Note that their is some NSFW language, but it’s an HBO show, so that shouldn’t come as a shock.
Now wait a minute Paul! Isn’t Playficient all about driving engagement in the office through creating a more playful and humourous atmosphere?
Why, yes it is! That, however, is a post in of itself, and something that will be for a later time.
If you want something that follows up on this, check out my post on creating a more engaging employee onboarding experience.
A Review Of Employee Engagement And Moving Forward
We’ve discussed the following:
- The impact of low employee engagement.
- The differences in engaged, unengaged, and disengaged employees.
- The reasons for low employee engagement.
- What organizations get wrong about employee engagement.
- Three ways organizations can boost employee engagements.
So, how do you ensure that you follow through with what was discussed here, and make clear, actionable steps to boost employee engagement?
They are covered in the three ways organizations can boost employee engagements, but I will cover them again.
- Go through engagement surveys, if you even collect them. Take a look at the feedback. Sit down, shut off your phone and email, and really go through it. These things are important. It can very likely be painful in the moment, but there is so much you can start to take away, and use moving forward from these.
- Go around your organization and ask others what they think the organization’s goals, values, mission statements etc. are. If you’re getting a wide variety of answers that have no overlap, something is obviously wrong and people are having different ideas of what they are. That’s not a good sign, especially in regards to engagement.
- Showing that the work of others actually matters. If you’re a manager, melt your cold heart for just a moment and give praise to your employees. Look at what they do, and actually give them something of value on that note of praise. It will go a long way.
We’ve only just touched the surface for employee engagement, but this will give you something to think about moving forward.
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Originally published at www.playficient.com on December 4, 2018.
