It is imperative for HR leaders to identify the level of employee engagement in an organisation and bridge the gaps to connect with employees better. It is difficult for an organisation focused on attaining its business objectives to allow room for employees who are not completely engaged and in sync with the long term organisational goals.
What will be the cost to an organisation for lack of employee engagement? What is employee engagement? What are the key drivers to get employees more engaged at work? What are the steps HR leaders should initiate for active employee participation and give their best shot every time?
An engaged employee in simple terms, is always fully involved and enthusiastic about their contributions at work. Truly engaged employees are highly motivated, inspired, committed and fascinated towards their job roles and are willing to exceed duty call to invest more man hours into getting a job well done.
However, such high levels of employee engagement are hard to find for HR managers. In case, such members are a part of the team, then every effort must be made by the HR leader to retain such talent within an organisation. It is a matter of obvious fact that highly engaged employees are more productive at work than their disengaged counterparts. The most compelling question seeking answers is: How productive is an engaged workforce over the disengaged ones?
The mindset and approach of engaged employees towards work is different, for they believe to be instrumental for organisational change. They exhibit confidence in their knowledge, skills, attitude, performance capabilities, behaviours and this consequently reflect on overall performance as well.
Hence, companies who do a better job engaging their talent force proactively do outperform the competition and set new benchmarks of success in the industry. Levels of employee engagement can clearly set great organisations apart from just the good ones. Some of the key drivers that drive employee engagement in an organisation are:
The critical task of HR leaders begins with creating an environment for employees to unleash their potentials to the fullest, learn and grow with the company. They are responsible for setting up a system wherein employee pay keen ear to listen to each other and resolve problems with cooperation. By creating a good combination of right environment and perfect culture, employees can strive much harder to excel, perform and help meet business objectives in a shorter span of time.
See: Keeping the Most Valuable Asset, Your Best Employee
Initiatives to maintain work life balance of employees and profit sharing incentives motivate workforce to perform better. Hence it is important for employees to feel valued, and be treated as the most valuable asset of an organisation.
Furthermore, employees should be provided with meaningful work opportunities for career advancement, wherein they get to do new things on their job. Not providing employees with knowledge resources and tools for success can be extremely de-motivating to create stress, frustration and ultimately lack of employee engagement on job.
Employees feel the need to be appreciated, recognised and rewarded for their efforts in the form of performance appraisals on a long term and short term feedback. This elevates their confidence levels and also helps them measure their contributions to organisation success.
Good HR leaders are great team builders. They create an environment that supports healthy collaboration of talent to bring out the best hidden potentials and deliver superior outcomes. HR leaders are continually challenged to motivate employees to collaborate effectively as on an organisational, group goals, departmental pursuits and more, excluding personal individual self-interests.
Leaders should demonstrate high ethical standards, transparency of workings and integrity at work such as to maintain company’s reputation and brand value in the competitive market. People always seek pride in their job roles and the companies they are associated with, so credibility of an organisation should never be compromised at all times.
While achieving sustained levels of employee engagement at work can seem quite a task for HR leaders, it is worth every bit of effort to strive for organisational excellence. Once employees are engaged then performance and productivity is guaranteed, which will eventually contribute to company’s growth.
Also read: Avoid These Mistakes to Retain Employees
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