The Importance of Driving Engagement with your teams
Today’s modern work environment is one in which businesses are working harder to achieve ambitious goals amid growing economic, political, and environmental uncertainty. To thrive in this challenging environment, companies need agile and effective tools, systems, and processes. More than anything, they need people who can develop and maintain all three. For this reason, it is critical that businesses engage employees who contribute to organizational success. Employee engagement is the secret sauce behind many successful ventures, and in a fiercely competitive environment, it has never been more important to understand how to effectively engage employees who can make tremendous impact within your business.
Employee engagement is the level of an employee’s commitment and connection to an organization. In their article titled Developing and Sustaining Employee Engagement, the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) explains that employee engagement has become a key driver in business success, and that high levels of engagement correspond to higher levels of retention, customer loyalty, organizational performance and stakeholder value. Engaged employees understand what is important to a business, and act with urgency to deliver solutions and proactively solve problems in line with the organization's needs.
SHRM went further in their analysis of engagement to define the attitudes and behaviors behind engaged and disengaged employees. The organization categorized behaviors into two groups: engaged and disengaged.
From this categorization one can conclude that engaged behaviors have a positive result on business performance, whereas disengaged behaviors could negatively impact the business. For example, an engaged and team-oriented player will help an organization reach their goals by working across the team to make everyone successful, whereas a self-centered employee may only care about the recognition associated with their work and may not work with others to deliver a collaborative result.
Employee engagement is a source of competitive advantage that all companies should be looking to integrate within their organization. To develop lasting engagement, organizations can implement a multipronged engagement strategy which includes three levers: 1) Communicating leadership vision and organizational outlook, 2) Demonstrating employee value, and 3) Setting expectations between the organization and employees.
Vision and Outlook
It is important to begin the engagement strategy with the leadership vision and outlook because it steers the direction of the organization. As a leader, it is critical to communicate the vision and goals for your organization, how employees tie to those goals, and how the organization is tracking towards meeting the targets. To drive employee engagement at this stage, it is beneficial for each leader to help employees understand how their individual scope of work aligns with the larger organization goals. This message can be communicated through regular in person meetings such as town halls, team meetings or one on one meetings with employees. Routine updates on the organization’s progress can be communicated via emails, but all employees should receive the updates at the same time. At this point individual employees should be encouraged to report out on their progress and assess if there are any concerns towards achieving the goals.
By developing communication channels between organization leaders and employees, organizations can develop trust and purpose in their workforce. When employees have line of sight to broader organization goals, and clarity on their specific contribution, they can approach their work with confidence and efficiency. The transparency can also develop trust between leaders and individual contributors who then feel comfortable voicing their opinion. This space is critical because employees are demonstrating that they believe their voice will be heard and that continued engagement will lead to important conversations and results. Further, by understanding the impact of their work, employees are more likely to remain engaged.
Demonstrate Employee are Valued
Another key aspect of an employee engagement strategy is demonstrating that employees are valued. Developing feedback mechanisms where individuals can voice their concerns or opinion is one avenue where companies can demonstrate they value their employees. This can be done through surveys, individual conversations, or soliciting feedback in team meetings. After receiving this feedback, it is crucial that leaders try to quantify the feedback, acknowledge the input, and try to address concerns.
Another important step organizations can take is investing in their employees to help them be more successful. This could be implemented through recognition of employee results, giving flexible autonomy to solve a problem, tuition reimbursements for continuing education, promoting from within and providing training or mentoring opportunities. When an individual feels invested in, they are more likely to continue to engage with an organization.
Set Expectations and Hold Each Other Accountable
The final step in developing the strategy is setting expectations between leaders and the individuals in the organization. Expectations are important because the relationship is two sided. Yes, it is important to engage employees, but it is also important that employees are delivering high quality results. Further, expectations help clarify the impact and importance of an individual’s work.
The first step in setting expectations is to clearly define the scope of the project and how it contributes to organizational success. Next, leaders need to specify any critical aspects of a project, such as deadline, defining what success looks like and when/how they expect to receive the project from an employee. Once those expectations are clear, leaders need to hold their employees accountable. This can be done by establishing clear metrics and feedback mechanisms that can be used to measure success.
Action into Insight:
There is a fourth aspect that leaders should consider when developing their engagement strategy: reflection. If you are a business or people leader, try to reflect on how you are working to actively keep your employees engaged. As you reflect, ask yourself if there is more you can do to improve the employee experience. Finally, consider bringing in a business advisor to shadow you and provide insights and recommendations based on your leadership and management style. Also, know when to bring an HR representative on board to further assist with improving the employee experience.
