What makes an office building a ‘place of work’? It is the employees (human capital), not the office premises, or the luxurious facilities or the equipment. The more engaged and happy your employees are, the healthier your organization is. In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, employee engagement plays a critical role in driving business success. High levels of employee engagement encourage talent retention, reduce employee turnover, improve employee performance and productivity and foster customer loyalty while maximizing ROI.
According to Gartner, to ensure success, employers must provide their employees with the information to help them aggressively engage with the corporate strategy and develop an understanding of how individual and team efforts can impact organizational outcomes. The research and consulting giant also strongly suggests employers to align company objectives to their people’s individual goals to drive employee performance.
Why Employee Engagement Matters?
- It makes employees self-motivated
- Helps employees have a clear understanding of their roles
- Helps them recognize the importance of their contribution
- Provides better job satisfaction to employees
- Lowers cost to value ratio for human personnel expenditure
- Reduces absenteeism
- Improves employee safety
- Enables more effective leadership
- Encourages employee advocacy
Best Practices for HRs to Develop and Sustain Employee Engagement
HR practices have a major impact on employee engagement. Here are some of the best practices that can help HRs boost their employee engagement:
Enrich their Jobs: Integrate value, diversity, autonomy and co-worker respect with jobs so that employees can have a broader view of their roles and become more enthusiastic to take on responsibilities beyond their job description.
Respect their Opinions: Conduct opinion polls and surveys that permit your people to express their thoughts and concerns. The more you ask for their views, the more they feel honoured, entitled, and like they are an integral part of the organization.
Recruit Smartly: Target candidates who are likely to perform their roles challengingly and more enthusiastically. Encourage people to opt out of the process if they are not suited for a particular role.
Emphasis on Regular Training and Development: Provide orientation to employees to create understanding about how their work contributes to the organization’s growth. Offer regular skill development training to help upskill them and boost their job performance, satisfaction and self-confidence.
Consider Strategic Compensation: Encourage pay-for-performance programs to drive employees’ attention towards incentivized behaviors. Implement a competency-based payment system to encourage upskilling and knowledge enhancement which in turn can help in improving employee performance.
Have a Performance Management System in Place: Set challenging goals for them aligning with the company’s strategic objectives, regularly provide feedback, and recognize thier accomplishments and voluntary contributions.
Encourage Community Participation: Your organization is essentially a community. Engagement activities from organizing an annual event to taking a team out to lunch or dinner can significantly help in encouraging that community spirit among your employees.