Employee Engagement – Surveying and Practical Tips

Nov. 30, 2009 - PRLog -- A definitive correlation exists between employee engagement and desired business outcomes whether that be customer service, retention of talent, individual performance, team performance, business productivity, or even enterprise-level financial performance. Companies must actively seek to understand and act on behalf of their employees’ expectations and preferences. This can be achieved through the following:

  1.  Giving Employees a Voice

Management practise affects people’s attitudes towards their work; by simply actively listening to employee views, a company can realise significant improvements in employee morale and see dramatic reduction in staff turnover. Allow your team the opportunity to feed their views and opinions upwards because without doubt, this is the single most important driver of engagement.  Critical also is to:  

a)     Keep your employees informed about what’s going on in your organisation, both in good times and in bad,

b)     Employees must see their managers committed to the organisation in order to feel engaged themselves, and

c)      The organisation must also have fair and just management processes for dealing with issues; also important in driving greater levels of performance.

2. Creating Positive Customer Experiences

Engaged employees give the customers a reason to return they are motivated, committed and engage customers to respond positively to the company’s services and brand. Importantly, they assist to breed ongoing customer loyalty, promote the brand and protect the employer from risks associated with poor service levels.

3. Delivering even greater Innovation, Motivation and potential for Remapping Internal Processes

Organisational leaders won’t always take the most traditional route of sourcing new ideas, such as through the R&D department. Many take innovative ideas directly from the very people involved with the brand day-to-day, the employees, customers, and partners. When looking to drive the company forward, engaged employees are most likely to contribute such innovation and fresh ideas. Surveying can often raise employee motivation and effectiveness through highlighting or identifying poor internal systems and processes, thus giving the company the valuable opportunity to remap critical processes for even greater effectiveness and productivity.

So what’s your organisation doing to drive the level of engagement amongst your team? Are you familiar with what the key drivers of employee engagement are? Do you measure this engagement? Finally, what support are you providing line managers to deliver these internal brand and engagement objectives? A study by the American Management Association found that the cost of hiring and training just one new employee can vary from as much as 25% to 200% of that employee’s annual salary.

An organisation’s ‘people management’ strategies and policies need to be aligned with those of the wider business and brand, your employees also need to understand how their work contributes to the overall organisational outcomes.

Survey your People

Employee Engagement Surveys capture attitudes, experiences and satisfaction of both customer-facing and internal support employees. This includes involving the Leadership team / senior execs and taking time to clarify the overarching issues and objectives. It’s also important to determine the key drivers of engagement most applicable to your organisation – examples of these may include challenging work, collaboration and teamwork, decision-making authority, customer focus, career advancement, company reputation (as an employer of choice), communication, resources, decision-making input and management interest. Once identified, the drivers should be aligned with your company objectives, including introducing appropriate accountability; behaviours and measurement of work-life balance. The organisation must then set about acting upon the results.

Measuring employee engagement alone will not improve engagement or customer response. Surveying is an initiative designed to build employee understanding and trust. It therefore goes without saying that companies want to retain the best people who care about the organisation, their work and their individual performance. Truly engaged employees create internal value, assure the company of employment stability and in effect, position that company for continued growth and profitability.

http://www.therightgroup.com.au

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Brand management and market research experts – The Right Group. Services include brand strategy & identity, marketing strategies, corporate branding & management training. We especially focus on the alignment between brand strategy and business strategy.

http://www.therightgroup.com.au