Successful companies have had employee engagement on their agenda for many years, but when it comes to ensuring your employees are fully engaged and feel part of the company, it is now more crucial than ever before.
The impact of the pandemic, for many, saw a shift in priorities, with organisations focusing on survival and adapting to new ways of working, allowing certain aspects of management to fall by the wayside.
As the country begins its recovery, a survey of 5,000 UK workers revealed that 89% were thinking of changing jobs this year. It is a well repeated fact that employees leave their manager, not their job, so it is critical that line managers and supervisors ensure they are engaging – instilling confidence in their people, keeping performance levels and morale consistently high, as well as turnover low.
It can be hard to build rapport and read emotions online, but research on successful companies has shown that employees are 4X more likely to be engaged if their manager practised employee engagement on a daily basis. It needn’t be a mammoth task, but managers do need training and practical advice on how best to support their teams; it cannot be assumed that it is intuitive. 10 Ways to Keep Your People, is a short blog that provides easy to implement tips.
As with all successful strategies in order to really succeed, good employee engagement needs buy-in from everyone in the company, from the top down. It has to be genuine and carefully crafted and implemented in a way that every single employee knows instinctively that they matter to the cause. The behaviours and values that define a corporate culture directly correlate to employee engagement.
But creating a vibrant, inspiring culture can be easy to talk about, yet difficult to deliver. In a Dale Carnegie study, only 21% of senior leaders thought their own corporate culture was excellent, indicating the level of change needed within businesses for culture initiatives to succeed.
For those that invest their time and efforts into transforming this area of their business, the bottom line results are tremendous. The Landmark London saw their hard work rewarded by becoming a Times Top 10 Company to Work For. In addition, upselling increased by a third and guest and employee satisfaction rates increased by 10%.
With an ageing workforce, employee burn-out increasing, and the full impact of Brexit on recruitment rates yet to be fully realised, businesses are facing a crisis in the war for talent. Whilst there are factors that they cannot mitigate against, they can affect and control the controllables by implementing culture and employee engagement strategies that give their people a reason to stay.
Resources and courses to help develop culture and employee engagement:
The Future of Employee Experience
Employee Engagement ‘It’s Time To Go All-In’
Transforming Attitudes and Actions: How Senior Leaders Create Successful Workplace Cultures