Employee engagement is one of the most researched topics in the field of HR in the last decade. Numerous pieces of research show that employee engagement is related to higher employee satisfaction and business profitability, which indicates why is it so important to strive to increase it. This article will give you answers to a couple of questions regarding this topic.
What is employee engagement?
In general, employee engagement refers to the degree of connection, motivation, and loyalty a person feels toward their job. It is a positive and fulfilling state that is related to work, and it’s characterized by enthusiasm, commitment and immersion in work tasks. Engaged employees see their work as important, meaningful, and interesting which is why they are more enthusiastic and personally involved in what they do at work.
Employee engagement is related to:
- higher employee productivity and performance
- greater employee creativity and innovation
- greater customer satisfaction
- less absenteeism
- a higher degree of employee retention
- higher income and development of the company
- greater overall (private and business) satisfaction and happiness of employees
How to achieve greater employee engagement?
Part of employee engagement arises from certain individual characteristics, such as low neuroticism, high self-efficacy, better time organization, intrinsic motivation. However, the company culture plays a big role in enabling employees to feel and give their best at the job they are doing.
So, the first and most important step to take into consideration when approaching this topic is that the company values and strategy are communicated transparently to employees and candidates, so that the right people are being put in the right position.
Once the company and the employees are aligned on the objectives that are set, the company is here to fuel and nurture the employee’s motivation to perform well on the job they love, and to develop their skills properly.
How to change the company culture to support employee motivation?
It is not enough for HR to just guess what a good improvement might be. Sometimes we are not even aware of a certain problem or the perception of the culture varies from one employee to another. To be able to improve work engagement, it is firstly important to continuously monitor employee engagement and take into account which factors in the organization are currently the most important factors influencing lower engagement.
Which is why, here in Serengeti, we like to ask our employees for their opinion and suggestions for improvements as often as possible. Through surveys, group meetings, individual conversations, evaluations and sometimes, unfortunately, exit interviews, we are continuously trying to measure employee engagement and gather more feedback. After all, employees themselves can give us the best feedback on what they are missing or want to improve. Just from the feedback, we can already detect some of the critical aspects in the company and plan actions to improve them. With this approach we are already noticing change, which can be seen through the continuous growth of our employee engagement. A lot of good changes in our company resulted directly from the feedback we were given from our employees.
We responded to their need to feel included in the decision-making process by keeping them informed about the company news with a much faster pace than before. We improved our knowledge-sharing practices and upgraded working conditions and the working environment.
