3 Actions You Can Take From CIPD’s Employee Outlook Survey
The CIPD have just released their survey findings from their Spring Employee Outlook: Employee Views on Working Life Survey 2015.
2,226 employees from a cross-section of organisations and industries were surveyed. In partnership with Halogen, they discovered that the Engagement Index has risen to 39% for 2015, up from 38% and 35% from 2014 and 2013 respectively.So while this trend is rising, what is holding it back?
Key findings in the report suggest these three things that could be responsible: Working culture, performance management, and employee attitudes to senior leaders and line managers.Let’s break these points down and show you some actions you can take to improve them in your organisation today:
1) Get your culture right!
For the first time, the CIPD survey asked employees about the culture they currently worked in, and what culture they would like to work in:
The survey found that, 55% specified that they would prefer to work in ‘an organisation with a family feel, held together by loyalty and tradition’.
What do we mean by culture? It’s ‘the way we do things around here’, or better still, culture is what happens when no-one else is looking!
It’s important that you have the right culture to help you achieve your business objectives. But also the right culture to help support and engage your employees.
Your employee engagement survey is more than likely your key tool to find out how it feels to work in your organisation, but are you asking the right questions to get the crucial data to making improvements?
Read our blog about employee engagement surveys here and get more tips for your survey and survey results.
2) Get your employee performance on track!
We know what mostly is important in employee engagement; that is improving, and getting better at something. Just having one annual performance review with your employees won’t really cut it. The CIPD results state:
With nearly one in five (18%) employees stating they don’t receive any performance feedback, and only 56% having objectives set as part of the performance process, it is unsurprising that even fewer (52%) perceive performance management as helping them perform better at their job.
It also said:
77% of those surveyed said they wanted clear and balanced objectives, and 79% would like to be assessed as an individual.
So how can you do this?
Employees actually want to be part of the vision, and see how their opinion and suggestions makes a difference.
1-2-1’s are a great opportunity to find out what your employees want to achieve in their role, maybe they want to know what their options for future development are? Look into training and coaching schemes, what new skills could they learn or improve on. What is their purpose with the organisation, other than to turn up everyday and do their job?
Take a look at our Role of mindset in engaging employees blog, it might just surprise you what employees like to be praised for in their work.
3) Get your people managers on board!
Managers are your employee engagement heroes, and are the ultimate conduit for improving engagement and communication.
While the CIPD survey reports that overall, employee attitudes to senior leaders and line managers are improving, there is still a margin for making this even better:
64% said they are either very satisfied or satisfied with their line manager.
There are several things a manager in particular can do to help employee engagement, alongside 1-2-1’s, for example:
Get to know employees as individuals, and communicate with them.
This may seem obvious, but it’s true! If a manager knows and understands an employee as an individual, they will be able to better motivate them. Why not:
- informal discussions over coffee or a social event
- holding regular visits or conference calls with employees based in other locations
- give employees the chance to share their views and contribute to defining team and business goalsFor our other 4 tips to becoming a more engaging manager, click here.
You can read the CIPD survey report in full here:
http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/employee-outlook_2015-spring.pdf
To find out how People Lab can help your organization become a success with employee engagement, request a call back here for a no-obligation chat with our expert Emma Bridger.
