Why is employee engagement important?
All companies want motivated and productive employees. Many business leaders might not know it, but the building of both motivation and productivity are supported by employee engagement. With today's young working generation and the changed way of working after the pandemic, employers need to understand how employees' values have shifted. In order to maintain and strengthen commitment in the workplace, companies now need to listen to the employees and adapt their practices accordingly.
Download reportThe majority of today's employees are disengaged in their workplace, and this has a major negative impact on both job satisfaction and employee productivity.
A global study by Gallup found that only 15% of employees are engaged in their workplace. Maybe to a surprise, the least engaged workers can be found in the Western Europe and the worst level of employee engagement can be found here in the UK, where employee engagement is reported as low as 8%.
So why is employee engagement important? Well, let's start by defining employee engagement and then explain why this should matter to your business.
When we talk about employee engagement, the most accurate description lands on the emotional bond an employee has with the workplace and the employer.
A strong emotional bond makes the employee both happier and more productive in their work, increasing the chances that the employee will want to stay longer at the workplace. In short, when employees care about their job, they will do their best to contribute to the achievement of the company's goals.
Why is employee engagement important?
Studies show that a high level of employee engagement contributes to the success of a company in several ways:
● Increased productivity
It is also important to be aware of the risks of low employee engagement. A study a few years ago showed that low employee engagement costs US companies a staggering $500 billion each year, due to lower productivity and poor customer service, among other things.
In addition, studies have shown that employees who feel low levels of engagement are 60percent more likely to make mistakes, which can affect the safety, physical safety or privacy of other employees.
Therefore, employee engagement is important for all organisations because having effective employee engagement strategies in-place helps create a better work culture, reduce staff turnover, increase productivity, build better work and customer relationships, improve safety and privacy, and impact company profits.
How can you increase employee engagement?
To understand how your employees feel, it's a smart idea to use employee surveys to understand them in depth. And then, luckily, there are many measures you can choose from to increase employee engagement.
You might be wondering what is the best way to start improving the engagement of employees and to help you with that, we have listed a few:
To avoid the isolation of teleworking, HR company Springsworks has tried to continue with "coffee machine conversations", through chat channels where people can talk about TV shows or share funny photos. Having a weekly call or a "water cooler chat"-slack channel can help people to discuss the things that build up the feeling of community at work.
Following on this: Talk to your employees, a lot, and make sure they have what they need to feel good and work productively. The easiest way todo this is with employee surveys, where you ask relevant questions.
Thirdly: Have more check-ins, where managers can talk to their employees to see what they need to feel good and be productive. As an example, at Winningtemp, we use temperature checks where we discuss about the trends of our employee engagement temperature data on a team and organisational level. This helps us to focus on both the strengths and weaknesses we have and can work to overcome together.
Why to build up employee engagement with surveys?
An employee engagement survey is so much more than an annual effort to check that everything looks okay. The most forward-thinking companies understand the power of measuring the well-being of their employees and ensuring everyone has the tools they need to perform at their best.
The question is not whether to survey employees, but how. What is the best way to collect employee insights and feedback? Read more on Annual vs Pulse Surveys here
By asking the right questions at the right frequency, you can increase well-being, engagement and productivity of your staff. You can achieve this by creating an overview of the answers and build an action plan based on the insights from your survey, and present it to your employees. They will feel listened to, and they will realise that they are part of the company, which will make them work harder to help the company succeed.
Read more on why to conduct engagement surveys here.
Elite Hotels knows why employee engagement is important
Elite Hotels knew that high staff engagement results in higher customer satisfaction, and to ensure that their employees feel engaged, they chose to use Winningtemp.
Bianca Britten-Austin is the Talent Manager at Elite Hotels and immediately saw Winningtemp as one of the most important tools to contribute to engagement in the workplace.
In the service industry, there is a strong correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. We are constantly asking our customers how they feel about our hotels, so it makes sense to ask our employees how they feel at work," Bianca says. We now have up-to-date data that is tangible, updated in real time and comes directly from the employees themselves. Employee engagement is one of our key factors to good profitability, that's just the way it is.
Read more on Elite Hotels and how they inrcreased their employee engagement with Winningtemp.
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