Employee Engagement: An Overview
Employee engagement is a key driver of business success. Therefore, keeping your employees engaged is essential to the success of any organization.
Organizations that have high degrees of engagement derive significantly more benefits than those that don’t.
Whereas engaged employees are typically optimistic and inclined to go beyond the call of duty, disengaged workers tend to be more pessimistic. As you can imagine, such disengagement can hurt a business in many ways.
Despite the benefits of a positive employee experience, low employee engagement rates are still affecting the entire job market, both locally and abroad. We’ve seen this, particularly since COVID-19. First in terms of ‘The Great Resignation’ and then in reports of ‘quiet quitting’, which refers to employees’ tendency to do just the necessary.
It appears that the biggest challenge lies in understanding what employee engagement involves and then figuring out how to develop an employee engagement strategy that works for your business.
This overview will get you on track toward employee engagement success.
What Is Employee Engagement?
There are different definitions, but it can be said that, essentially, it refers to the emotional or psychological connection that employees have with their job and the organization as a whole. But is it not the same as job satisfaction? No, it isn’t. According to the SHRM “although the concepts of employee engagement and job satisfaction are somewhat interrelated, they are not synonymous. Job satisfaction has more to do with whether the employee is personally happy than with whether the employee is actively involved in advancing organizational goals”.
That said, to advance organizational goals, staying on top of employee engagement initiatives should be a top priority for HR managers. It can have a tremendous impact on organizational performance and sustainability. Specific benefits are discussed next.
What Are The Benefits of Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement has many benefits, resulting in greater overall success for the company.
Increased Profit
Did you know that disengaged workers cost the US economy up to $605 billion annually? On the other hand, according to the Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report “Business units with engaged workers have 23% higher profit compared with business units with miserable workers.” Enough said.
Increased Productivity
When employees feel passionate, motivated, and connected to their jobs, they’re more likely to be productive. One study found that businesses with engaged employees see an 81% reduction in absenteeism and a 14% improvement in productivity.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
When employees feel engaged in their work, they’re more likely to put extra effort into providing a top-notch experience for customers. This means that customers receive higher quality and better attention from the staff. After each interaction, they’ll feel more valued and more satisfied with their experience. In short, it’s a win-win for your employees and your customers.
Positive Company Culture
What is company culture?
Bill Marklein, Founder of Employ Humanity, puts it very plainly: “Culture is how employees’ hearts and stomach feel about Monday morning on Sunday night”.
You know exactly what he’s talking about, don’t you? Is your company the type of workplace employees like coming to on a Monday?
Does your workplace inspire employees to strive for the best outcomes through creativity and collaboration? Positive, constructive experiences and even the occasional fun activity create a positive company culture that permeates throughout every department and leadership level.
Attracting and Retaining Top Talent
When you keep employees engaged you’re not just helping your company improve its bottom line through increased productivity and efficiency. You’re also helping your organization attract and retain top talent.
As the recent Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, employees working from home soon came to realize that work could be done equally easy at home, with the added bonus of flexible hours. This largely, prompted the onset of the ‘The Great Resignation’ when droves of people resigned from companies where they were forced to stick to rigid working conditions. Instead, people opted for organizations more willing to experiment with creative work policies, gig work, as well as freelancing. This exacerbated the need for retention of top talent and scarce skills. Yet, if yours is an organization who boasts high levels of commitment, you are more likely to attract top talent or be more successful in preventing your best employees to move on to better prospects.
To illustrate the point, one study found that companies that prioritize regular employee feedback (which is an element that correlates with engagement), see 14.9% lower employee turnover rates. This is an impressive statistic considering it costs US businesses around $5,000 in total to hire and on-board one new employee.
Helps to Maintain Employee Wellbeing
Furthermore, high levels of engagement generally result in greater emotional robustness when people are pushed to their limits, as was the case with certain organizations during lockdown. This helps prevent burnout.
What Are Examples of Employee Engagement versus Disengagement?
For starters, employees who are engaged will, generally, come across as positive.
According to Workhuman, the SaaS company, in their article 4 Powerful Ways to Fuel Employee Engagement, these employees will typically show high levels of motivation, a desire to learn and grow, exceed expectations, and be keen to connect with co-workers.
SHRM goes further, suggesting that these employees are ‘solution-oriented’. They also tend to pass along credit but accept blame, as opposed to disengaged individuals, who tend to accept credit but pass along blame.
Low engagement is actually easy to recognize. Some of the most obvious manifestations are:
- Increased absenteeism
- Increased late-coming
- Missing deadlines
- Careless mistakes
- Doing the bare minimum (these days known as ‘quiet quitting’)
- Increased tendency to complain and drag down office morale
- Decrease in team participation
- Not showing interest in learning and development opportunities
It should be noted that some personality types may also be more inclined to show these behaviours, without necessarily having a negative attitude – See link to our blog post. The real litmus test is when someone who has previously shown relatively ‘positive’ behaviours starts showing less positive behaviours.
What Causes Low Employee Engagement?
There could be several causes that result in low engagement or disengagement.
Unfairness
One of the biggest potential causes of disengagement is unfairness (or perceived unfairness). Irrespective of different levels of responsibilities, people expect rules to apply equally to all, whether it pertains to pay or promotions, or any other practice where fairness would be expected. This highlights the need for well-conceived policies and practices that are consistently applied.
Disempowerment
When employees are not allowed to make decisions without first having to consult management, this could be one of the most paralysing causes for employees to lose heart. In today’s world, everyone is held to maximum accountability, but if this is not accompanied by the authority to make role-relevant decisions, people are in effect, disabled.
Similarly, when employees’ inputs are not sought on issues that affect them and they feel that decisions are made on their behalf, commitment may easily be scarred.
Lack of Leadership
There is a saying that ‘’people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses’. Bosses are often considered ‘bad’ when they are autocratic, condescending, poor listeners, focused on what is wrong rather than what is right, and fail to communicate openly and regularly.
Yet, a lack of leadership also refers to the absence of direction or vision by senior management and worse, a lack of demonstrating the espoused values of the organization. This seriously impairs trust and pride among employees.
Burnout
Burnout can result from too much work, diffused working hours or a lack of resources/tools to perform one’s tasks.
The prevalence of burnout has increased since the pandemic. With ever increasing expectations from employers, more and more people report burnout. According to Gallup, when people feel burnt-out, they are more than twice as likely to be seeking a new job.
What Do Employees Want?
Apart from fair practices, wanting to be empowered, and a positive work culture accompanied by positive leadership, these are the things employees seem to want post-Covid:
Recognition and Relevant Benefits
Recognition is more than just compensation and benefits. It also refers to feeling valued as an employee. To be noticed for who you are and what your specific needs and extra-mural responsibilities are.
That said, a study indicates that “those employees who are satisfied with their pay and benefits are 26% more likely to have their expectations exceeded at work and 13% more likely to continue working with their current employers for 3+ years”.
Another study shows that 69% of employees would work harder if they received more recognition.
Greater Flexibility and Wellbeing
A new awareness of the potential for work flexibility has developed in recent times. Employees are seeking work-life balance and flexible options. Also in this context, Qualtrics reports that when people rate their work-life balance as ‘poor’, they are unlikely to go ‘above and beyond.’
To enable greater flexibility, most management consultancies indicate that hybrid working is here to stay. We are also seeing calls for the introduction of a 4-day work week – across the globe and in South Africa.
Meaning and Purpose
Being able to identify with what the company does and how it does it, is becoming more and more important to employees. Gartner found that 53% of employees have started to question the purpose of their day-to-day job since the onset of the pandemic.
Also quoting Qualtrics, Josh Bersin says research shows that “meaning and purpose” remains the #1 driver of employee engagement.
Growth and Development
Apart from the rapid increase in technology that require up-skilling and reskilling, organizations that offer creative growth and development opportunities are likely to be more effective in getting employees’ emotional buy-in.
Employees are looking to develop themselves, not only formally, through specialized skills, for example, but also through workplace gigs and projects created within the workplace.
There is also a great need for more support, education, development, and coaching post Covid-19, according to Debbie Goodman as quoted in Forbes.
‘Real’ Work
According to Josh Bersin, employees are sick and tired of meetings. And having to deal with bad process and systems, unproductive meetings and inefficient systems. Instead, they want to be doing real work.
He also proposes an increase in ‘slack time’, i.e. time that they’re not busy with their main tasks. This provides time to reflect, innovate and do the kind of ‘extra’ things that could add value to the business.
In Conclusion
What does this employee engagement mean for your business in the year ahead?
It means you need to start recognizing it as a means to enhance business objectives, as well as having more awareness of the value of employees, not as subordinates but as work partners.
In today’s competitive market, this is more important than ever. Employees have several choices, and you need to find a way to make your company stand out.
Decide what you want for your organization, and we will help you develop an engagement strategy that meets your unique needs.
About Competence SA
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