Most Employees Work Against Employers’ Best Interest: Attention to Engagement Provides Solution

Oct. 1, 2009 - PRLog -- According to national research conducted by HR Solutions, Inc., approximately 75 percent of employees are not actively engaged in their careers.  This research is based on data from HR Solutions’ National Normative Database, which is comprised of nearly 3.5 million respondents from over 2,400 organizations.  This statistic on employee engagement is alarming for senior management at all organizations, as it puts business objectives, company morale and strategic direction at risk.

“During the past 20 years I have worked with a variety of businesses,” explains HR Solutions, CEO, Kevin Sheridan, “and I have found that it is vital to empower employees in order to firmly bind them to a company and its goals, otherwise they are essentially working against the best interest of the organization.”  “Businesses must encourage their workforce to become actively involved with the company and their careers in order to move forward in tandem,” continues Sheridan.  “This mission starts with the personal engagement of each and every employee.”

Sheridan offers the following tips for businesses looking to bolster employee engagement:

•  Equip your employees with tools they need to improve engagement and stay engaged.  

Provide your employees with a means to measure their own engagement, as well as access to the necessary tools to develop a personal plan for improvement.  PEER™ (the Personal Employee Engagement Report), a quick and easy 16 question assessment, enables all employees to confidentially gauge their own level of engagement (Actively Engaged, Ambivalent, or Actively Disengaged), while providing useful subject-specific advice for improvement.  HR Solutions developed PEER™, patent pending, after identifying an imbalance of responsibility for workplace engagement within its client base and within the overall workforce.  “Managers have long been expected to encourage and improve the engagement of their teams, while in reality at least half of this duty should belong to the employees themselves,” explains Sheridan.  “We developed PEER™ to put responsibility back into the hands of employees and to empower them to actively address their own performance.”  Furthermore, employees recognize its efficiency, as nearly three-quarters of the participants stated that they would recommend PEER™ to a colleague.

•  Match employee goals to company business objectives.

Whether you incorporate a primer on your company’s strategy into new hire training or implement a quarterly program that reviews the performance and goals of your staff, aligning the objectives of both employee and employer will ensure that team members from all levels of the company are committed to the overall vision of the organization.  In addition, these actions will build loyalty and create a sense of partnership between staff and management, leading to greater business outcomes and increased retention.

•  Have management lead by example.

Managers should coach employees by demonstrating behaviors and characteristics of an “Actively Engaged” employee.  After employees personally assess their own engagement, management should encourage their development by setting up a meeting to discuss goals and create action plans for future improvement.  PEER™ highlights important work behaviors that employees should recognize and address, in addition to relevant questions and discussion points that they can bring to their managers.  These recommendations are mutually beneficial – 69 percent of PEER™ users agree that the report is useful in helping them to increase their engagement level.

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HR Solutions, Inc. is an international Human Capital Management Consulting firm located in Chicago, IL, specializing in Employee Engagement and Exit Survey design, implementation, and results. Contact www.hrsolutionsinc.com or call 312-236-7170 for info.