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It’s impossible to get the best out of people if you don’t understand what they’re thinking and feeling about your organisation.
Does your company boast a workforce full of do-ers who love their jobs and are committed to sticking around long term? If you answered in the affirmative, chances are productivity and profitability aren’t a problem for you either.
ProHance research suggests highly engaged teams have absentee and employee turnover rates that are 41 per cent and 59 per cent lower than the norm, respectively. Their profits are higher by an average of 21 per cent, courtesy of their high levels of productivity, while internal theft is 28 per cent lower.
When a team is less than enthused about the nature of their toil, and the firm they’re toiling for, it’s a rather different story.
Research shows that if a workforce doesn’t feel engaged and positively energised, its output will suffer. Forty-one per cent of stressed-out workers say feeling that way has a negative impact on their productivity levels.
Taking the pulse of your team
These stark differences are clear evidence of why it makes sense to invest time and resources into optimising employee engagement via programs and practices that contribute to job satisfaction and commitment.
But before you’re able to do so, it’s vital you determine the status quo – that is, the way your staff are thinking and feeling about your organisation and their relationship with it, right here, right now.
Unless you have a fulsome understanding of those sentiments – the good, the bad and the ugly – you’ll struggle to craft engagement strategies that resonate with employees and deliver the results you’re seeking.
Obtaining insights
That’s where employee engagement analytics come into play. The term refers to a spectrum of metrics that can be used to assess the degree of commitment, enthusiasm and satisfaction employees exhibit towards their employer and role.
Surveys, feedback mechanisms and sentiment analysis tools can be deployed to gauge attitudinal metrics – the emotional connection employees have with their work and workplace.
Tangible indicators, such as productivity levels, absenteeism rates and staff turnover figures, are what’s known as behavioural metrics – empirical insights into employees’ level of engagement with their employer, as reflected by their actions and interactions.
Finally, developmental metrics – participation in, and engagement with, learning and development initiatives – reveal employees’ interest, or lack thereof, in upskilling themselves in order to contribute to organisational growth.
Armed with insights into all of these areas, you’ll be well placed to develop an engagement program that moves the needle and gets your team feeling more positive and purposeful.
Taking positive action
Connecting with employees in a more meaningful way is a great place to start. Encouraging dialogue, sharing feedback and involving individual contributors in the decision-making processes fuels engagement and, over time, will help you build a more open, supportive culture.
So will demonstrating your commitment to upskilling and continuous learning. Employees crave growth and investing in training, mentoring and leadership programs to help them develop their capabilities will make for a happier, more motivated team.
And when team members give it 100 per cent, acknowledging their efforts is imperative. Whether it comes in the form of praise, awards or bonuses, appreciation drives engagement and incentivises high performers to keep up the good work.
Last but not least, it’s vital to bear in mind that employees have a life outside of work. Making a genuine commitment to helping your team achieve genuine work/life balance will boost their energy and dedication and lead to greater engagement and productivity.
Tools to make the task easy
It’s easier to make progress when you have the right tools. Deploying an operations enablement and workforce platform will elevate your capacity to understand, measure and optimise employee engagement across the enterprise.
Select a solution that enables you to carry out in-depth data analysis, monitor your employee engagement initiatives in real time and extract actionable insights, and you’ll be well placed to foster a positive, can-do workplace culture that sets your enterprise apart from its competition and makes sustainable success easier to achieve.
If growing your people, productivity and profitability are priorities this year, it’s an investment that will pay for itself many times over.
Brendan Maree is vice-president and country manager for Australia and New Zealand at ProHance.
Jack Campbell
Jack is the editor at HR Leader.
