Employee engagement is the sense of emotional affiliation, attachment and passion a person feels about the business they work for.
Your people can be engaged, or they can be disengaged.
Disengaged employees can be a burden on your resources, as they’ll often come to work, do the bare minimum and then go home.
They often cause more damage to the business than good.
On the other hand, your team members who are highly engaged will almost always invest more time and energy towards improving their performance for you and contributing to the growth of the business.
Highly engaged team members should be a priority of every leader and business owner.
“Your product is not the product. Your product is your people.”
When your team is highly engaged, it’s like rocket fuel for the business.
The 2022 State of the Workplace Report found that only 21% of employees are engaged in their workplace right now. 21%!! That’s a seriously alarming figure for all leaders and business owners.
If you want to get more specific as to exactly how employee engagement is a proven business strategy that helps yield organic results and motivate you to grow the engagement of your team, here’s a list of the top benefits recent studies have found.
Increased Productivity and Profitability
A recent Gallup poll found that when you have highly engaged employees, their productivity goes up 17% and your profitability increases by 20%.
It makes sense that when your people love what they do and who they work for, they’re going to give you their best performance.
A Lower Turnover Rate
When you’ve got highly engaged team members, they won’t want to leave your business. Right now in this current environment – the Great Resignation – where people are leaving jobs in growing numbers, business owners need deliberate strategies to grow a highly engaged team that stays with them for the long haul.
When your key people leave, they take with them all the experience and skills they attained while working for you, plus it’s so disruptive to the business and it’s a drain on your time and resources to recruit and onboard new team members.
Gallup found that businesses with a highly engaged workforce decrease their turn over by up to 59%!
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Customer service can make or break your business.
A proven way to improve your customer’s experience is to improve the engagement of your people. Engaged employees are highly motivated to build lasting customer relationships and provide exceptional service, so your customers keep coming back for the exceptional service they receive every single time.
When people receive phenomenal service (which is often hard to find), they tell others about it and it’s this organic word of mouth advertising (the holy grail of business promotion) that fuels your business further.
Minimal Absenteeism
When you’ve got a team of highly engaged people, they love coming to work for you and with each other, to accomplish the goals and vision for your business. There’s no place they’d rather be so not coming to work isn’t on their agenda at all.
By having a highly engaged team, you can improve your absenteeism by up to 41%.
Improved Workplace Safety
Increased employee engagement leads to improved workplace safety. Highly engaged workplaces are safer as employees generally are more focused on what they’re doing, and they’re doing it to the best of their ability and are more alert and invested in the safety of their team.
As a result, a recent Gallup poll found that there are 70% fewer safety-related incidents recorded in organisations that have higher employee engagement scores.
These benefits of high employee engagement can collectively boost your profits and help you achieve your long-term goals. However, to be able to achieve these, you need some deliberate strategies to grow and sustain it.
How To Increase Employee Engagement In the Workplace.
There are many strategies to raise levels of employee engagement. Some of our top ones include:
- Sharing the vision of your business with the new hires and your team.
It’s why you do what you do. Keep bringing them back to it regularly and reinforce the importance of their part in achieving it.
- Set the right expectations and convey them from the beginning.
Gallup found setting clear expectations is a key driver in growing employee engagement but only approx 50% of employees know what’s expected of them. Set not just the expectations of each role, but also the thinking and behaviours you expect too.
- Recognise and show appreciation for what your people bring to the business.
The American Psychological Association found that 90% of employees who feel valued at work say they’re more motivated to do their best, compared to 33% of employees who don’t feel valued by their employers. They also found that 50% of employees who feel like they don’t really matter to their employer intend to search for a new job within the year.
- Care for your people.
Gallup found that only 40% of people thought their employers truly cared about them (down from 50% at the start of the pandemic) but – if you care for your people, they’re 4.1 times more engaged in the business and their role than those employees who don’t feel the love. - Ensure the work/life balance of your people.
Stressed employees are not healthy employees and are definitely not engaged ones. - Provide ample opportunities to learn and grow.
People leave organisations when there is limited potential for growth. - Provide the right resources for your people to do their job properly.
Have regular one on one communication with your top 20% of your team.
These strategies are highly effective at growing the engagement of your people and we know that they’ll truly help you and your business but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re looking for a personalised plan to grow the engagement of your people, get in touch with Leadership Dynamics today.
