HR Magazine reported recently that ‘HR is failing to engage employee hearts and minds’, leading to some rather poorly-sick statistics.
ORC International reported that only 37% of workers say they feel encouraged to be innovative, and just 49% say they feel valued at work.
These figures, sadly, are down from previous years.
Engage For Success have reported on the benefits to companies who have engaged employees, with companies in the top quartile engagement scores averaging 12% higher customer advocacy, 18% higher productivity, and twice the net profit than those in the bottom quartile.
Jabbar Sardar advised in HR Magazine that:
“I don’t necessarily believe HR should be the ‘moral compass’, instead organisational values should come from the business itself. HR can, however, have a role as the ‘moral charter’ of an organisation. By this I mean that HR acts to ensure the business’s leaders are living up to the values that have been agreed by the organisation.”
Companies and organisations often know what the symptoms of being ‘under-the-weather’ are: employee motivation and production is low, absenteeism is high, lack of innovation, poor sales and customer experience…but many are still missing the root-causes of these, and employee engagement is the medicine!
Sardar continues that HR must take the lead in building supportive workplace cultures, and to do so, must have leaders and managers who can gain the trust and admiration of the workforce.
Investors In People Job Exodus 2015 Report shows that the most popular reason for employees being unhappy in their roles at 46%, is due to poor management, with not feeling valued as a staff member coming in a close second.
We recently blogged about a TED Talk by Linda Hill who discussed the different approaches companies such as Pixar and Google took to engage their employees. They did this by giving the power directly to the employees to tackle the problems the companies were facing, by encouraging their opinions and most innovative ideas.
Both Pixar and Google’s approaches were key, giving employees the space, motivation and inspiration to think, to produce different ideas, no matter how impractical or silly. In doing so, the best ideas were found.
The most important thing, is to show your employees their input and views are important, and that they can, and do, make a difference. Employee engagement may have some 50 definitions out there, but the themes it encompasses are easily recognizable:
involvement, commitment, collaboration, motivation, and performance…
and as Pixar highlighted, it works.
So, what can you do to make your employee engagement healthier?
Listening Groups
Listening is an easy and quick way of getting things started, ask your Managers to set-up a regular Listening Group within the teams and talk about the issues that are affecting your work-force, and suggest solutions. Keep it fair and open (assign a moderator), compile the feedback and make some action points.
For more information on Listening Groups, and more ideas, visit our Free Downloads area here.
We also have an employee engagement DIY toolkit, especially for Managers right here.
