A solid employee engagement strategy is a lot like Zambak (if you’re from South Africa) or Windex (if you’ve watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding a bunch of times) – it’s good for everything. In the world of human resources, employee engagement is a beautiful panacea that cures all ills and turns the workplace into a results-driven nirvana where everyone can perform to the best of their ability while contributing to the good of the whole.
Well okay, the printer will still pack up now and again, someone will reheat fish in the office microwave and there will be the odd parking space dispute, but you get what we’re saying – engagement is the bomb.
Why? We thought you’d never ask!
Here are a few of the most important reasons you should be getting verrrrrry excited about the notion of tailoring an employee engagement strategy:
1. It improves productivity
An engaged workforce is a hard-working one, for one simple reason – when employees are engaged, they feel connected to the company and will naturally work harder to ensure its success. If you want to see productivity soar throughout your organisation, try asking your senior leaders to ensure that their teams have challenging, fulfilling work, share in the responsibility for business outcomes, are fairly treated and provided with opportunities for training and advancement. These tactics are engagement gold.
2. It keeps your star players around
Did you realise that 89% of employers think employees leave for more money but in reality, only 12% do? The rest leave because they feel unchallenged or undervalued.
Here are some more scary statistics if you’re up for it.
The good news is that when your employee engagement strategy is working, your star players are far more likely to stick around. This is good for a few very obvious reasons – you retain your top talent, gain a good reputation that will attract even more top talent, there is less brain drain, fewer handover oepsies occur, and productivity is not hampered by repeated training cycles.
3. It boosts morale
Engaged companies do not have a very lively gossip mill. When employees are engaged and feel valued at work, they are far less likely to wind each other up around the watercooler because there won’t be any reason to – they can simply go to their superiors with any issues they may have because they feel confident that they will be heard. This, in turn, is good for morale. When there is no reason to gripe, there is far more time to foster bonds and grow tight as a unit. This is when the magic happens.
4. It improves employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is such an important part of the engagement process, and perhaps one of the hardest aspects thereof to properly quantify. It goes beyond feeling useful, valued and comfortable within a given working environment – it’s about getting a sense of joy from one’s work. It’s not something you can force or fake. However, when all the building blocks of a proper employee engagement strategy are in place, the leaders of an enterprise set the stage for their employees to feel satisfied in their roles, which in turn gives them the benefit of being surrounded by happy workers.
Read more: 7 Ways you can drive business growth with employee engagement
5. There’ll be fewer sickies and accidents
Uninspired employees take sickies, and overworked individuals can even cause accidents in certain work spaces. This is why the components of a properly-tailored employee engagement strategy is a strong focus on work-life balance. When employees are empowered to use their time to the best of their ability, and not expected to do the work of two or more people, the need for crack-of-dawn arrivals and midnight-oil burning decreases and their ability to enjoy life outside of work increases. This is not only good for their mental state, it’s good for their physical health, which is good for productivity.
6. It opens up lines of communication
Engaged employees are great at communicating. Because they feel empowered and know that they will be heard, they speak up when something is wrong and they aren’t scared to share new ideas. When the information-sharing silos within an enterprise are done away with in this way, the potential for fruitful collaboration between different teams and depart increases exponentially. This is what every results-driven company wants.
Read more: My employee engagement scores came back negative, what now?
7. It promotes creativity
In an engaged work space, employees feel free to explore the boundaries of their positions and use creativity to solve problems as they arise. Cross-pollination of ideas, on-the-fly peer-to-peer mentoring and great new notions to streamline existing processes occur in these spaces. It’s innovation central and you won’t believe the types of wonderful ideas emerge from these hotbeds of creativity.
8. Your customers get excellent service
Happy, engaged employees take pride in providing their company’s customers with the best service possible. They’re also well-positioned according to their unique skill sets and properly resourced with all the tools they need to get the job done properly. And you know what happens when someone gets great service – they tell other people about it! One happy customer can create major word-of-mouth buzz that would put even the most well-placed billboard or 7PM TV ad to shame.
See, what did we tell you?
A solid employee engagement strategy is the all-singing, all-dancing, results-driving magic bullet you’ve been looking for. It improves productivity, keeps your star players on the court, boosts morale and improves employee satisfaction. Not to mention reducing the number of sickies, opening up lines of communication, promoting creativity and ensuring that your customers get the best service possible.
In short, it’s 100% flippin’ amazing. Like Khama Billiat meets Elton Jantjies meets Karla Pretorius amazing.
Are you looking for a way to effectively engage with your workforce? Give bountiXP a go. The first 14 days are on us.
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