Four Strategies to Build Employee Engagement

March 10, 2016
|In Employer Branding
|By Pam Willoughby

Take a look at your top business goals for the new year. Do you specifically mention your employees and their engagement in the top 3? Top 5? Are they specifically mentioned or prioritized in your business objectives at all?

Many of you may be thinking: I take care of my employees. We have great benefits, we have flex schedules, a gym and we conduct an annual employee survey.

But is that enough?

Some food for thought:

  • Only 32 percent of the U.S. workforce reports that they are engaged in their work. 1
  • Employee engagement levels have been flat since 2000.1
  • Active disengagement is estimated to cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion per year. 1
  • Three out of four employees report they are open to or actually looking for a new opportunity. 2

Jumping from the statistical to the practical, what can you do about culture and engagement to attract and retain top talent?

The answer: Think of your employees as another customer segment that you must actively engage. Put the same amount of planning and strategy development into engaging employees as you do engaging customers.

Build employee engagement with these four strategies:

  • Brand: Develop or improve upon your employer brand to let prospective employees know what you stand for and to set the tone for the organizational culture.
  • Communicate: Establish a year-round internal communications plan that keeps employees informed about company happenings, new product/program launches and celebrates victories.
  • Share: Involve your employees in spreading the word. Create a mechanism for employees to share company successes and news via their personal social media.
  • Measure: Look at how you measure engagement. An annual survey is nice, but what happens with the results? Create a scorecard with the top issues, document improvements and innovations and celebrate achievements.

Employees are an important part of the equation for business success. They design, build, promote and sell your products and services. They are the face of the company with clients and customers. If they aren’t engaged in the business, then how effective can they be in representing your business to others?

 

[1] 2016, Employee Engagement is Stagnant in the U.S., http://www.gallup.com/poll/188144/employee-engagement-stagnant-2015.aspx

[2] 2015, Candidate Behavior Study, Career Builder, http://careerbuildercommunications.com/candidatebehavior/