Good levels of employee engagement are vital to the success of any business, in fact, highly engaged employees can result in a 23% increase in profitability. And because engagement in the workplace is such an important topic, we thought we would speak to someone who knows a lot about the subject, our Business Outreach Manager, Craig Jobey.
With there being so many different ‘definitions’ of employee engagement, I feel that it’s completely open to interpretation. For me, I like to narrow it down to an individual’s emotional investment towards their organisation. As for a good indicator, I don’t believe there is a one-stop answer of ‘how to engage your employees,’ I feel that it comes down to the day to day employee experience. If you get the day to day environment and experience right - engagement takes care of itself. Get the day to day right, and your employees will be able to envision a future within the business.
The starting point I often find is that organisations are aware there is an issue somewhere, but aren’t necessarily able to pinpoint the exact problem, meaning it’s difficult to identify, never mind solve.
The second part of that is employee retention. Since the start of my career, I’ve always been confused at why some organisations invest so much time, effort, & money into recruitment, but once they’re ‘through the door,’ what’s happening? The average cost of a trained employee leaving is £31,000, so if we’re not focusing on the day to day employee experience, it’s not a cost-effective model.
The first thing I’d say is great job for measuring that! I find too often organisations have no definitive way to gain a measure of engagement so identifying that you’re struggling is a great start.
In terms of how to solve, the basics are to listen to your employees. Internal communications should be two way, and using employee voice to help steer that strategy is an amazing starting point.
In short - it’s vital. We’ve all seen plenty of articles & statistics of how engagement correlates to higher productivity, higher employee retention, fewer health & safety incidents.. I could go on. To me, it’s a no brainer.
I would definitely say that’s the case. I think traditionally employees were seen as a utility, and the shift has consistently been moving towards that day to day employee experience. It’s something that more and more people are paying attention to, both when job hunting and just out of general curiosity. I’ve seen 2 articles in the last week alone shining a spotlight on poor practices & poor culture in 2 very high profile companies. With the dominance of social media these days, press like this can be extremely damaging to a business.
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