How to Increase Your Employee Engagement

No organisation can operate to its ultimate potential without an engaged workforce. Employees who are engaged, committed and prepared to work towards their personal goals, as well as the goals of their team and organisation as a whole, drive success and growth.

The reverse of this is also true, with more devastating and arguably impactful results. When an organisation has cultivated and unengaged workforce, the workplace environment and culture can quickly become toxic. When people become unhappy in the workplace, it can bleed over into their personal lives and quickly cause stress and burnout and cause their mental wellbeing to massively decline. This will ultimately lead to a damaged bottom line and return on investment as productivity plumets, absence rates increase and results in higher turnover costs.

Organisations need to recognise the importance of curating a workplace environment that supports and boosts employee engagement. The growth and success of an organisation lives and dies with its workforce, and engagement ensures maximum productivity which means maximised potential.

What is employee engagement?

A study by Mind found that many organisation leaders in the UK had identified employee and workplace engagement as a top priority. This is because higher levels of employee engagement have demonstrated higher productivity and profitability. Therefore, that poses the question; What is employee engagement?

Whilst there are multiple definitions and interpretations of employee engagement, The CIPD state that the clear through line in academic literature is that it can be seen as psychological state experienced by employees. Whilst some might see it as the physical, cognitive and emotionally manner people interact with their workplace, The CIPD recommends the more definable view of not being burn tout and instead being:

• Energetic

• Resilient

• Enthused

• Inspired

• Proud

• Concentrated

• Committed

It is believed that when an individual possesses these qualities in the workplace, they will be more dedicated not only to their own personal and career goals, but those of the organisation as well. It will lead them to sustain their levels of focus and be better overall decision makers.

Why is employee engagement important?

Having touched on some of the positive impacts that employee engagement can have, it is important to consider how it not only impacts the grander scheme of an organisation’s goals, but the individual and those around them. The only way an organisation can continue to grow is if senior leadership can keep the workforce motivated, involved and ensure they feel valued. When this is done, people are happier, more content and dedicated. Muster these feelings across a team and that inspires collaboration, creativity and innovation which enables employees to continually hit their individual, team and organisational goals, furthering engagement and mental wellbeing.

These feelings of engagement and commitment create an eco-system of continual support where team members can feel secure that others will be there to assist them, and this interconnectivity can prevent talent drains and recruitment costs due to turnover.

Some of the primary benefits of employee engagement are as follows:

• Increased personal and organisational commitment

• Higher employee retention

• Greater productivity

• Team synergy

• Elevated and shared motivation

• Improved bottom line

• Increased return on investment

• Reduced absence rates

• Inspires organisational trust

• Encourages creativity and innovation

• Greater commitment to shareholders

• Reduced recruitment costs

• Lower employee turnover

• Better business outcomes

Measuring employee engagement

The complex issue with employee engagement is the fact that you may believe that as an organisation, you are putting the correct procedures in place to encourage greater engagement, but you may not find out that you have failed until it is too late. By the time most organisations realised that their workforce is unengaged, productivity has dropped, output has been lowered, quality of work has decreased, and turnover rates have increased. It is for this very reason that organisations need to put procedures in place to attempt to measure workforce wellbeing, sentiment and pair this with output to find the engagement levels.

Maintaining and improving workforce engagement isn’t a ‘one and done’ affair. It is a constant and ongoing process that requires regular review and inspection. This may be done quarterly or monthly to give an idea of scope without pestering individuals. Conducting these reviews on a regular basis provides scope for review, where pitfalls may be occurring and enabling you to address any issues. Some of the following methods are the strongest and most common methods of tracking workforce engagement and wellbeing are as follows:

Engagement survey Very often, individuals in the workforce will feel uncomfortable speaking to management and leadership teams about issues they are facing or about negative feeling they may have around company culture and workloads. This is where wellbeing and engagement surveys can be hugely beneficial. These surveys can be completed anonymously by individuals so that they can freely share their true thoughts and feelings without fear of persecution.

There are a variety of paid services and websites that will create curated workplace engagement surveys, but you can also find free online tools such as Survey Monkey to create and send out your employee surveys. They can be crafted to include questions on a range of topics and then be easily sent out to the entire workforce of an organisation over email. We've listed some common engagement survey questions below:

• "How satisfied are you in your day-to-day life at work?"

• "How motivated do you feel at work on a scale of 1 to 10?"

• "Do you feel supported by your manager?"

• "How would you describe the workplace culture?"

• "How likely are you to stay in your role for the next 12 months?"

• "Do you feel satisfied with your work-life balance and if not why?"

• "How approachable do you feel senior leaders of the organisation are?"

The questions may seem straight forward, but they leave little room for ambiguity and confusion, so you can gather the true thoughts and sentiments of your people. Regularly analysing these will enable leadership to alter and amend wellbeing and engagement strategies to get the most out of the workforce.

Focus groups

Focus groups enable individuals to come together to support and understand each other when they are giving their thoughts and feedback on organisational culture and their own engagement. Groups can vary in size, but they usually consist of a small group of employees who get together to openly discuss topics.

You can hold a focus group in a variety of ways. But the vast majority of organisations chose topics or questions before opening the floor to others. This more personal session can give you a greater insight into an employee's complex thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Exit interviews

As has been covered, poor employee engagement often results in higher employee turnover rates. By carrying out exit interviews, management and senior leadership can better understand areas of employee engagement and wellbeing that require improvement.

By seeing where issues occurred with individuals who weren’t engaged or happy within the organisation and truly taking the feedback on board to implement an effective strategy, organisations can prevent further turnover and increased commitment.

Some simple questions that can be asked during an exit interview are as follows:

• "What were your relationships with your manager and colleagues like?"

• "What makes you want to leave this organisation?"

• "What do you think are the positive aspects of this organisation?"

• "Were there any issues that you encountered at work in your role?"

• "How would you describe the culture of the organisation?"

One-to-one meetings

Organising regular one-to-one meetings between individuals and line managers provide a forum to discuss employee performance, sentiment and build a greater relationship between individual and line manager, founded on trust and development.

Employees can tell leadership teams about what works and what doesn't. This might be role specific, it might be a personal issue, or it could be surrounding organisation culture. Leadership teams gain greater insights, can offer support, and address any issues raised to solve the issues of employee engagement.

How to improve employee engagement

The process of assessing and measuring employee engagement has been established. However, the key element for any organisation is to understand how they can further encourage and improve workplace engagement amongst its workforce.

Firstly, leadership teams need to establish a clear strategy and procedure for management teams to firstly implement and then follow. This will streamline the process of how leadership and management teams can effectively boost workforce engagement whilst effectively tracking it. Here are a few strategies that can be implemented to create a clear and effective procedure:

Employee engagement initiatives Often times, engagement and commitment are driven by a shared goal. It is for this very reason that targets and goals, whether they be individual or team based that can be rewarded are vital to motivating a workforce. Without clear goals, where progress can be tracked, people can quickly feel lost and disincentivised. They may feel their work is menial and lacks purpose. By setting goals with the incentive of a financial bonus or even smaller rewards for smaller targets such as team meals, it can inspire motivation and commitment in people and overall boost engagement.

Define and improve workplace culture Motivation and passion are dictated by environment. If a person is placed in a negative environment, where those around them are suffering and their wellbeing is declining, said individual will replicate this behaviour and lose their motivation. As humans are social creatures, when they share information and negative feelings about an organisation, it can quickly pick up traction and be replicated by others. As well as this, if a person is unhappy in an environment, due to heavy workloads, they can become isolate which can further impact their wellbeing. All these factors can lead to higher levels of stress and anxiety, some of the primary causes of burnout. When a person is burnt out, they are mentally, emotionally and often physically exhausted, making them unable to be fully engaged in their work. When leadership teams set a culture of support, togetherness and acknowledgement of effort and achievement, it leads to commitment, respect and greater engagement. Workplace culture is established and maintained by those in positions of authority, and the example they set trickles down to others.

Give people a voice Everybody wants to feel that they are valued and respected. Ensuring people are heard and their feelings are considered is key to demonstrating this value and respect. If a person let’s their feelings be known in confidence about a workplace, whether those be thoughts be positive or negative, it is imperative to be accepting of these views, understand where they are coming from and if anything can be done to alleviate negative feelings. Acknowledging their thoughts, acting on negative feedback to correct issues builds a sense of respect between an organisation and the workforce, leading to an improved sense of engagement.

HA | Wisdom Wellbeing can support you with employee engagement

Boosting employee engagement isn’t always the simplest task for an organisation, but it is necessary and imperative for success and growth. Sometimes to cultivate this engagement, management and leadership teams need support. Using HA | Wisdom Wellbeing’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), your people have access to expert, BACP accredited support they can access confidentially, 24/7, 365-days a year. When individuals are dealing with feelings of stress and feel their mental health is declining, they can access a free 24/7 helpline with our expert counsellors. Through our helpline, employees can access legal and financial information, relationship advice and mental health support all year round and seek support on boosting their mental wellbeing and workplace engagement.

Conclusion

An organisations success is dependent on its people. If they aren’t engaged or committed to the goals of the organisation, they will simply never be achieved. Organisations and their leadership teams must consistently work to keep their workforce engaged. This can be achieved through respect, nurturing wellbeing, incentivising and togetherness, making the organisational goals feel like truly communal goals, making an organisation more efficient, cost effective and leading to ultimate growth.