With employees today having increased bargaining power in a highly competitive job market, attracting high performing skilled workers has become a challenging activity for leaders and HR professionals. This coupled with the need to increase revenue without significant increase in costs, whilst maintaining an engaged workforce has forced leaders to pay close attention to employee engagement as they uncover ways to not only find, but retain talent.
This shift in thinking has caused leaders to consider new organisational models that foster greater employee engagement as they see the potential impact this can have on their bottom line.
Qualtrics has identified 3 best practices to consider when rethinking your organisational model.
1. Meaningful work
Your people need to feel that what they are doing matters. This means giving them the tools and the autonomy to perform their jobs and contribute so that they know the value they are adding to your business.
Whilst it’s important to create jobs that are meaningful, it is just as important to ensure that you select the right person for the fit. Very few organisations use any type of formal pre-hire assessment, sometimes leading to poor hires.
Bill McMurray, Managing Director Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics said, “When we hire people who fit, they perform well, and in turn, love what they do. HR professionals must understand the success of an employee’s fit and engagement by reinventing how they manage their entire employee lifecycle. Collecting employee feedback from the time of on boarding to their exit is critical for organisations to gain insights into how they can identify and predict factors that create low engagement and retention problems.”
Just as you want your team to work hard, you must also give your team down time to relax, engage and create. It may sound counterproductive but when people work more than 50 hours a week, they tend to burn out, impacting levels of work and overall happiness in the workplace.
2. Supportive Management
Your management can make or break your engagement programs. Make sure to set transparent goals to eliminate conflicting information and actions across the business. Provide progress updates and revisit them with the wider business. This will help drive action and accountability across the business.
Coaching and development are also key practices. Organisations with high levels of employee engagement focus on developing and mentoring great leaders through investment in coaching and ongoing support. Organisations can use online 360-degree assessment tools, like Qualtrics, which allows employees to be assessed not only by their manager, but their peers and other stakeholders.
3. Flexible Environment
Your employees spend a lot of time in your workplace; they need to feel comfortable there. Given the nature of work today, if leaders want to drive engagement, they need to provide flexible and supportive work environments. This could mean break, recreation and/or collaboration areas. Each culture needs something different. The key is to listen to your employees by collecting feedback from them through your employee engagement surveys and pulse surveys.
McMurray said, “The key to greater employee engagement is understanding where employee frustrations lie or where employees do not feel they are being supported, and then doing something about these issues. Organisations can use platforms, like Qualtrics to measure and optimise the entire employee lifecycle. By capturing feedback at various stages you are giving your employees a variety of ways to express their feelings. For example, doing an annual employee satisfaction survey. However, combining this with pulse surveys allows organisations to dig deeper into particular issues and identify whether improvements are taking place. Additionally, pulse surveys can be used to test employees reactions to new strategies or initiatives.”