The Only Tips You’ll Need To Improve Employee Engagement

Employee engagement refers to the part of the relationship between an employer and its employees.

Engaged employee refers to someone that is absorbed and enthusiastic about his or her work.

These employees also take positive actions that can further your organization’s goals, reputation, and interests. Thus, employee engagement is a well-known focus in human resource and internal communications management.

Organizations that have engaged employees are expected to perform better than organizations that do not.

Being in the workforce, you may also have found that you performed better at jobs where you were more absorbed and believed in.

In 2003, The Conference Board of Canada conducted a study where they found a 0.51 correlation between engagement and the productivity of customer service in the organizations that were surveyed.

In 2006 Fabick CAT, a Caterpillar dealer revealed that it had spent five hundred thousand dollars investing in its employees and increased its revenue to three million. That’s about six hundred percent return on investment.

Many more studies show that focusing on employee engagement can dramatically increase a company’s revenue.

“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace”.

Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup.

What Having Engaged Employees Might Look Like

If you have engaged employees in your organization, you may notice how different they behave, compared to disengaged employees.

Engaged employees use discretionary effort. These employees will do work that isn’t asked for, essentially going above and beyond the call of duty. Most employees only do what they are told, and even then, the effort may be mediocre at best.

Engaged employees have a sense of urgency towards the tasks that they do. They tend to complete tasks faster than others and in some cases, do more than you paid them for.

Do you like ideas? Engaged employees often have a lot of ideas about your company that they just can’t wait to share. They will freely give you ideas that may help you improve your organization or a given project.

Engaged employees love feedback. In fact, they crave feedback because they are always eager to improve their performance in the workplace. These employees won’t normally get upset over feedback, providing that it is delivered professionally.

Engaged employees will do the above mentioned and more if given the opportunity. It’s usually difficult to hire an employee that will be engaged right from the start.

However, many employees just need a push in the right direction to become engaged.

If you have a significant number of disengaged employees in your organization, it may be an indication that you need to invest in your employees. Maggie Millard from KaiNexus points out twenty things that engaged employees do.

20 Things That Engaged Employees Do

How to Measure and Improve Employee Engagement in Your Organization

It can be difficult to measure the exact level of employee engagement within your organization, as with most things when dealing with people.

One good way to measure employee engagement is to conduct surveys yearly or quarterly.

Some companies conduct yearly surveys that have been developed for the sole purpose of measuring engagement. Surveys can help you understand your employees and see where their level of engagement is.

Your managers are important for driving engagement in the workplace but it is not their entire responsibility to do so. However, unskilled managers in the area of people skills can often hurt the engagement of an employee.

This is why people skills, also referred to as communication skills are at the top of the management requirement list. In truth, your organization is responsible for keeping your employees engaged and you may structure your organization in such a way that it does so.

For example, you may structure your organization in such a way that invites contribution and collaboration. Employees can become engaged when they feel that they are part of something or their opinions matter. Welcome all ideas and consider them seriously.

You may also improve overall communications in your organization. Implementing training sessions, regular meetings, and non-work related activities can improve employee engagement, as well as morale.

Are employee satisfaction and employee engagement the same?

Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction, What Separates The Two

Employee satisfaction deals with how content or satisfied an employee is with their job. As mentioned earlier, employee engagement deals with the relationship between an organization and it’s employees.

A satisfied employee doesn’t always mean more productivity. For some employees, to be satisfied may mean that they are receiving their paycheck on a regular basis. For others, it may be how close work is to their homes or complacency.

Many organizations focus on engagement because it’s been proven to have a positive impact on overall performance. It’s almost like killing two birds with one stone.

When employees are engaged, they automatically become satisfied. They are probably satisfied because they have found a place to work that excites them to get out of bed in the morning.

Improving the engagement of your employees can increase revenues. This is because it improves employee satisfaction, productivity, retention, innovation, and profitability.

How Would You Improve Employee Engagement At Your Company?

Do you have any thoughts or ideas to improve employee engagement within your company?