Engagement might be widely backed up by research but how can you know what motivates your employees if you don’t know the level of engagement of your employees?
“A happy worker is a productive worker.” We all know the saying, and it is backed up by mountains of research which proves that an engaged workforce delivers enhanced organisational performance.
Recently, an independent survey commissioned by MidlandHR found that 92 per cent of companies agreed that employee engagement is important, showing that firms recognise engagement as a strategic objective in its own right.
Contrast this with another statistic from the research, which showed that 49 per cent of the business leaders questioned do not understand the level of engagement within their organisation. The discrepancy can be explained by a general lack of awareness, or perhaps the perception that employee engagement is difficult to measure. The latter is an outdated point of view, as advances in HR software have made an even stronger case for engagement with modern solutions and metrics making data easier to collect and interpret than ever before.
So why is it important to engage employees? Engagement is a cost-effective way for organisations to get more from their people. Businesses must truly understand what motivates their employees, because this understanding is the key to unlocking enhanced performance. The wage bill often represents the highest cost for a business, so it makes sense to ensure that this most important asset is equipped to perform at its best.
The good news is that it is now easier to manage employee engagement than ever before thanks to technology advancements which make for quicker, simpler and more seamless data collection and analysis. Talent management solutions represent a key growth area within the HR software market because they help organisations to understand which people strategies create value and which do not. They give powerful visibility of information to understand where to cut costs, where to reallocate spending and where to invest more for far greater return through improved performance.
As the UK slowly drags itself out of recession, this is the precise moment when businesses should look to focus on employee engagement. The recession has seen workforces slashed, external recruitment halted, central services cut, whilst at the same time a more driving need for organisational excellence to create competitive advantage, key to survival in these times. This causes enormous churn in the workforce, roles have to change, there is a far greater emphasis on performance and there is a complete re-evaluation of what the organisation’s core skill requirements are. This drives the need to engage an insecure and often disillusioned workforce and organisations which fail to address employee engagement may suffer a skills drain as the economy recovers, damaging the business at the precise time when it should be looking to capitalise on the improving economic outlook.
The first place to start in the process is to understand employees’ current levels of engagement and this is typically done via a staff survey. Until recently, these were paper-based, making them time-consuming to organise and carry out, and employees were often reluctant to give honest answers because of concerns about the lack of anonymity offered by hand-written responses. The latest on-line surveys offer anonymity and reminder functionality which increase uptake and quality of response, and the collation, aggregation and dashboard capabilities give high visibility of where issues lie.
But collecting the results is only half the job; what really matters is what happens next. For many years there was something of a “file and forget” culture surrounding employee surveys. This can have more of a negative effect than not conducting surveys at all.
The employee engagement research found that the top five factors affecting employee engagement were: relationship with team/peers, relationship with line manager, recognition of achievement, a good work/life balance and the opportunity to learn and develop skills. When considered alongside the top three reasons for leaving an organisation, they focus on career, promotion and development – those elements are at the very heart of Talent Management. This shows that quality leadership skills, reward and recognition for performance, understanding the skills capabilities of the workforce, a flexible working environment and clear development pathways, are intrinsic to an engaged workforce.
Talent management solutions which are fully integrated with HR and payroll, provide powerful visibility of information to enable organisations to align their people to organisational goals, develop and nurture their talent to support future requirements and realise the true value of their people.
Karen Bull is product strategy manager at MidlandHR
