In the modern business world, where innovation and collaboration are paramount, the key to any successful organization is the engagement and satisfaction of its employees.
But why is employee engagement important and how does it benefit your organization? Discover all you need to know in this ultimate guide to employee engagement.
You will discover the what, why, and how behind successful employee engagement strategies. You will also discover the secret to enhancing employee engagement through an enterprise alumni platform such as Aluminati.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement is a term used to describe an employee’s emotional commitment to their workplace and their role within it. It is their level of enthusiasm about their work and can be identified by their dedication to the job.
Employee engagement is a natural result of the employee’s experience in their work role. This can be facilitated and boosted through various strategies.
Who is responsible for employee engagement in a company?
Everyone in the workplace plays a role in employee engagement, from coworkers to supervisors and, of course, the employees themselves. All these interactions play a key role in how each employee perceives their workplace and work duties.
However, a company’s HR professionals are usually tasked with creating an employee engagement strategy.
Benefits of high employee engagement
Employee engagement is the path to job satisfaction and a greater sense of well-being at work. Yet there are even more measurable benefits that are not only good for the employees but also the company as a whole.
Increased productivity
With a successful employee engagement strategy in place, your company will notice higher levels of productivity. Happier employees work harder and more efficiently. Creating a happier workplace is worth it, with a causal link between happy employees and a 13% increase in productivity.
Improved employee retention
Research conducted by CIPD shows that employee engagement leads to higher organizational identification and commitment. So, when you increase engagement levels, you reduce employee turnover, too. Actively engaged employees are more likely to stay with the company, even in hard times.
Enhanced employee well-being
Employee engagement fosters a sense of purpose and connection to the organization. This promotes a positive work environment and social support which, in turn, leads to enhanced employee well-being.
Highly engaged employees take fewer days off due to illness and perform better in their work duties.
5 ways to improve employee engagement
Increasing employee engagement is easy when you implement the right practices. These five methods will skyrocket employee engagement, increasing your business’s success.
1. Provide a smooth onboarding process
Employee engagement initiatives should start at the very beginning of each employee’s journey with the
organization. A smooth onboarding process is one of the most significant drivers of employee engagement.
Create a comprehensive onboarding plan, including pre-arrival communication, required documents, and training materials.
Use an enterprise network like Aluminati to set up permissions, access credentials, and share training resources. This network will act as a centralized portal for new hires to access onboarding information and resources.
Aluminate for Enterprise offers a user-friendly digital library that is ideal for sharing and accessing all relevant onboarding information.
2. Create a positive company culture
Employee engagement is about more than employee satisfaction and experience. It is also related to their perception of the company. When the company’s core values resonate with your staff, you increase employee engagement.
Engagement levels will never be high if your staff are at odds with the company culture. Be transparent about company policies, and share the organization’s inclusivity/diversity vision and mission with the entire team. Post relevant company updates and news on your enterprise network’s dashboard.
Facilitating a space for your employees to connect and collaborate will also create a positive company culture. Aluminati’s Groups feature allows your team to create group chats based on common interests. These can center on work-related topics, like sharing industry trends and news, or personal interests, such as sports or reading.
A culture of diversity, inclusivity, and professional support will do more than just raise engagement in existing employees. This engagement strategy will also make your company a more appealing workplace to prospective future hires, enhancing the employer brand too.
3. Recognize and reward achievements
Of all the employee engagement strategies, a rewards and recognition system is one of the most successful. Encourage managers to give praise when and where due, and employees to congratulate peers on their achievements.
Establish an official rewards and recognition program. Implementing this is easy when you use enterprise social networks and alumni networks. A rewards and recognition program gives your employees a sense of validation and inspires them to continue to do their best.
When an employee is excelling at work, recognize them by making a post on your enterprise network’s dashboard. This will lead to further engagement and create a cycle of performance and reward that ultimately results in more productivity and efficiency.
4. Offer professional development opportunities
Professional development opportunities are essential for an employee’s growth as an individual and as a part of your organization. It gives your company a wider pool of skills to draw from, and it drives employee engagement.
When you empower employees to develop their careers it makes them more loyal to the company. They will feel that their professional goals and aspirations are heard and supported.
You can offer such opportunities completely in-house, through video/online courses and tutorials on your enterprise network platform. A core repository of study materials will ensure that future employees will have access to these same opportunities.
Offering mentorship opportunities is the ideal way to facilitate your employees’ career development. Aluminati’s enterprise network offers online mentorship programs where your alumni and employees can pair up and learn valuable skills and knowledge from one another.
5. Engage your employees with company events
Company events are particularly effective at promoting team engagement. They foster employee engagement by promoting a sense of camaraderie. Take this to the next level with your own corporate alumni association.
This provides a base for encouraging, nurturing, and mentoring your most vulnerable employees, those most at risk for disengagement. Your corporate alumni, those ex-employees who excelled in their respective roles, can continue to be of benefit to the organization by motivating and engaging employees on your behalf.
It also opens the door to other corporate alumni benefits, such as the possible re-employment of your alumni for leadership succession roles.
How to measure the success of your employee engagement strategy
How do you gauge the effectiveness of your engagement strategies? Here are the top four ways of measuring employee engagement.
1. Surveys
An employee engagement survey will give you deeper insights into how employees feel about the workplace and their role in it. Employee engagement surveys quickly highlight who the satisfied and dissatisfied employees are, and the reasons for their feelings.
After gathering these insights, you can intervene with some of the strategies above. Rather than measure business success, these surveys are designed to measure individual engagement.
These can be pulse surveys or annual surveys, sent out through your company’s enterprise social network.
2. One-on-one interviews
While surveys can offer many insights into engagement, they are structured around specific questions. Sometimes, employees need to describe their engagement (or lack thereof) in their own words.
When employees feel heard, they feel validated. Regular one-on-one interviews give individual employees a chance to speak up in a safe environment. Ask them about their employee experience, how they feel about the workplace environment, and how satisfied they feel in their roles.
Conducting exit interviews is another excellent strategy to gain insights into your employees’ experiences and find areas for improvement.
3. Performance metrics
Key performance indicators (KPIs) don’t just highlight how efficient and productive your staff are. They give you a glimpse into the employee engagement levels in your company.
Although employee happiness is difficult to measure and quantify, it is possible to glean this information from other metrics. Because employee engagement is one of the key drivers in workplace performance, you can deduce that engagement is relatively high when the whole team is performing well.
4. Retention rate
One of the key drivers behind employee retention is employee engagement. When employees feel valued and appreciated, they will be more actively engaged in the company. This will foster company loyalty, and they will stay with the organization.
The employee experience can be either a positive or a negative one. When the employee experience is positive, you’ll have high team engagement leading to productivity, customer loyalty, and other positive business outcomes.
The opposite is also true. A negative employee experience causes disengagement that impacts the entire organization. Create a positive employee experience, and you’ll increase retention and reduce employee turnover, saving on recruitment costs.
Skyrocket your employee engagement with Aluminate for Enterprise
The significance of implementing an effective employee engagement program cannot be overstated. It goes beyond mere job satisfaction; it propels businesses towards increased productivity, improved retention, and enhanced employee well-being.
The most effective method to improve employee engagement is with an enterprise social network. This is the ideal platform for launching the excellent strategies covered in this guide.
With Aluminate for Enterprise, you can do this and so much more, which makes it the most effective employee engagement strategy of all. Aluminati offers all the best employee engagement software, backed by years of expertise. Request your demo today.
