In this week's blog post will be looking at employee engagement. Defining employee engagement can be difficult due to the needs of the individual and the multifaceted nature of the concept itself. Issues related to engagement can include, but are not limited to: motivation, success, loyalty, recognition, flexibility, culture, individuality, professional growth and so on. Employee engagement may be the decisive factor in employee retention, differentiation, and company wide success. Therefore, managing and fostering engagement is one of the most important tasks in a manager’s or HR professional’s career.
Employee data consultants, the Hay Group, have identified six mega-trends influencing the future of employee engagement. Found here, the white paper defines these trends as: globalization 2.0, environment crisis, demographic change, individualism, digitization, and technological convergence. We will not explore every trend listed, as I believe many are interdependent, but instead we’ll try to explore a few of the issues involved.
The economic centers of the world are shifting. No longer can a company rely solely on the needs and wants of a purely western workforce, nor can they graft the same engagement template onto different cultures or regions. Customs and socio-economic factors shape all of our desires. We strive to achieve the goals that our culture deems worthy, or buck the trend and derive satisfaction from defying our culture’s goals. Every generation has a little bit of iconoclast in them, so understanding the generational composition of your workforce along with their culture is critical as well. This rise of a global society also makes for a more diverse and vibrant workforce that may not all share the same sensibilities. Therefore a multifaceted approach is necessary in the development of an effective employee engagement plan. The core of any successful engagement plan is the employee survey. By surveying your employees, not only do you gain insight on your employee’s needs, but give the employee a sense of agency and the feeling of being heard; a powerful tool indeed.
We touched earlier on the concept of age in the previous paragraph, but let’s talk a little about how the demographics of the workforce is changing. With the baby boomer reaching retirement age, a younger workforce is taking over the reigns of the workforce. During this transition we are looking at the most age-diverse workforce that the world has ever seen. To make matters worse, after the global financial crisis, many retirement age workers have found it impossible to retire. These coming years are uncharted waters and must be navigated carefully. The methods of engaging a 66 year old who saw his 401K disintegrate and is now just burning the clock are vastly different than a 25 year old, eager to begin his new career and professional development. A younger workforce may be frustrated by the lack of modern technology in the workplace, while the older generation may feel threatened or frustrated by the encroachment new unfamiliar tech. These two issues need not be tackled individually, by allowing the younger employees assist the older workers in adapting to the new environment, while fostering a relationship that allows the older workers to help mentor the the newer employees. By understanding the the needs of your individual employees, you may find that one group's issues may be solved by another’s, and vice versa.
Engagement may not only be affected by the organization interacting with the employee alone, but may also be affected by the organization’s interactions with the society at large. Along with the rise of social media and a more connected world employees have more and more opportunities to see of a company’s successes and also its misdeeds. An organization must be honest and enthusiastic in its sustainability efforts. They will find out, and an organization will be taken to task, not just by the general public but by its own employees. If a company is enthusiastic about its environmental initiatives not only will you have more satisfied employees, but they will be your greatest evangelists. Social media can be fraught with peril for any company that doesn’t manage their image well or pushes employee engagement were the will doesn’t exist. At the same time it can be a powerful tool to collect and gage solicited employee feedback and foster stronger positive relationships with one another. Internal social media sites, intranets or message boards can be a source of collaboration and can encourage engagement, when not presented as just another task or a chore with no reward.
Employee engagement impacts all elements of an organization’s performance and should be at the forefront of an business’s HR strategy. By tailoring you strategy to your business’s culture and specifically to the individual, you can create a workplace that encourages hard work and loyalty rather than a workforce that works for a check and 5 o’clock.
To find out how different people find engagement in their work, check out the Best Part of My Job podcast below.
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