Best Ways To Create Better Employee Engagement

For organizations, with a goal to maximize performance, they need to look at employee engagement. Employee engagement is ensuring that everyone in the organization has the right conditions that will inspire and motivate them to do their best each day, and to ensure their full commitment to the company and achieving organizational objectives.

Engaged employees care about the company and take pride in their work, instead of just earning a paycheck or using it as a stepping stone for a better job elsewhere.  With all the moving pieces internally and externally that organizations must manage, it is easy to forget this key piece nor is it easy to achieve overnight.

For some organizations, they are unsure where to get started, how to get started, or what the approach should be to achieve employee engagement. To help those organizations get the most from their employees and improve employee engagement, here are the best practices to achieve employee engagement.

Employee Journeys

A common focus for organizations is “Customer Journeys.”  The process of attracting, onboarding, and engaging with customers; and how that experience is laid out for the best results. Take that same concept, and those practices and apply it to your employees; there is not much variation between the two.

The 3 keys to a successful employee journey are:

•    Enable a positive first impression: when employees first come aboard, make sure every experience is planned out, and easy for the employee. For example; how they get registered for benefits or get their first paycheck.
•    Be there during moments of truth: It may be a marriage, a baby, a loss, etc. These impactful moments weigh heavily on the employee. Organizations need to be there to support them and provide the information and help they need.
•    Design thoughtful journeys for high-frequency activities: Look into all the tasks that employees deal with and how you as an organization can improve efficiencies.For example, submitting expenses. This task happens frequently but having a painful process will negatively impact the internal perception of the organization. Appearing like the organization wants to take advantage of their employees and make it difficult to be reimbursed.

Value Creation

To get better employee engagement, you must provide value to the work that your employees do. To achieve this, organizations should provide the tools and processes to create a seamless work process. Studies show that 19% of an employee’s workweek is spent searching for and gathering information or tracking down colleagues to help with specific tasks. Therefore, being able to optimize your employees’ workflow will provide great value to both the individual and the organization. No organization has found the perfect solution and likely no company will ever solve this issue 100%, but looking at increasing productivity and providing the right tools to be able to access the “Corporate Crown Jewels.”

Digital Capability Focus

Examine how employees interact with your business. Focus on the different engagements that employees will have and at different times. For example, the experience that office employees using desktops will be different from remote employees on a laptop, which will be different from employees out in the field on a smartphone. Look into how information is planned, authorized, and communicated.

Roadmap the Transformation

Evaluate where your organization is starting and where you would like it to go. While some organizations may face extreme transformational forces that require rapid changes, most organizations can afford to be methodical and plan their transformation journey and how far to take it, and at which time. Consider the steps your organization will take, the enablement of capability, and understanding the benefits. Most importantly, how you will bring people along with you.

End to End Methodology

Examine the areas and characteristics of transformation; looking at the items that are a high value for the organization and the items that are high cost. While ideally each item would be addressed in the transformation process at some point. The goal is to establish a sequence of priority to extract the most value as soon as possible for the lowest cost.

Test and Learn

Gone are the days of one and done projects. Transformation is constant, therefore organizations will need to stay on top of these changes to ensure these programs are providing the best value and extracting the most engagement from employees. Take the time to run prototypes and examine the performance. Decide on how new employee engagement initiatives will be measured for success. What key performance indicators will be tracked and measured?

It is important for organizations to foster employee engagement. To achieve this, organizations need to apply a transformational approach. Begin with a vision by examining what you are looking to solve in the employee journey. Next, plan how this transformation will take place and bring on change champions to advocate and help those who may be resistant. Finally, execute the employee engagement plan.

Now this may seem like a large and costly undertaking, and you may not see the end value from employee engagement, however, according to Aberdeen, organizations with engaged employees see an increase of 26% in revenue year over year and boost profitability by $2,400 per engaged employee.