Measure the engagement of your employees.
Why I hear you ask? Well simply put, if you understand the engagement levels of your team and act upon them in a favourable way, your business will not only be more productive and successful, you will also encourage loyalty, commitment, and true drive from your team. It will help to develop a culture of inclusivity, transparency and ‘esprit de corp’.
Why would you not do it!
When you measure engagement, you will likely be looking at areas such as; communication, inclusion, benefits, recognition, relationships, growth and leadership to name a few.
Once you’ve surveyed your teams, you may receive a whole host of responses across all of these areas. You may also find all the data to be quite overwhelming to face and a challenge to deal with. However you MUST deal with it. Asking the questions but doing nothing will only encourage contempt from your teams. Be sure to take action!
Think of the quick wins you could put in place to get you on your way. You’ll be surprised how positive actions can snowball once you get going.
To help you get started, here are some quick tips and ideas which could help you.
Encourage the senior team to be visible in the business. Breaking down the barriers which can often exist between employees and the senior team will help with communication and connection. If the senior team are more approachable, employees will be more inclined to ask questions and get involved.
Clearly communicate the results of the surveys and the actions the business is committed to taking. Employees want to know that they are being listened to and that their engagement is being taken seriously. Prove it by taking action.
Ask for help from others in the business. Foster innovation. Involving employees will help to make them feel that their wants and desires are being listened to and that their input in hugely valuable. Your team will have a lot of skills and ideas to offer. Involve them and see things get done quicker and with greater diversity. Win, win.
Create both short and long term actions. The quick wins can help to build momentum and encouragement. Long term actions can be built into the business strategy to ensure they have a place on the table and remain on the agenda.
Where necessary, evaluate your processes and address any inefficiencies. Unnecessary tasks will slow down processes and can be super frustrating for employees, negatively impacting their engagement.
Train managers on how to analyse engagement feedback and how to work alongside their teams to move things forward with positivity. There’s nothing worse than a manager who takes poor engagement scores personally or, worse still, blames others.
Thank your employees for their feedback. Let them know that you value their input and make commitments to improve what needs attention.
Remember that some things cannot be fixed overnight. Some items will be slow burners and take more time, commitment and investment before change is seen. Be patient.
