The importance of employee engagement cannot be overstated. Engagement strategies have proven to reduce staff turnover and improve productivity and efficiency. Most importantly, engaged employees are known to be happier in both their work and their home lives. When people are engaged, it fuels everything they do with purpose, energy and enthusiasm.
Why is Employee Engagement Important?
In general, engaged employees are committed to their work and the goals of the company. Employee engagement is therefore important for a number of reasons:
1. Engaged employees boost productivity
Reports show that employees who are invested in their roles are 21% more productive than those who aren’t.
Engagement can be considered a symptom of success. Employees who are succeeding and feel good about their contributions to the business are naturally more likely to be proud to work for the company, be happy, and come to work every day feeling valued.
2. Engagement helps to retain top talent
Engaged employees are involved and invested in their jobs and are therefore less likely to leave. Keeping your top talent is essential to ensure your company continues to perform at its best.
Employee turnover can cost up to 2.5x the employee’s salary when the costs of hiring, onboarding and training a new employee, plus the loss of productivity in the interim and the knock on effect of an unengaged employee on other employees are all considered. With this in mind, if your business has low retention rates, it’s time to think about why people are not engaged. When the best people start to leave, this can also cause a domino effect with others.
3. Engaged employees enhance company culture
People who are engaged in what they do are generally easier to work with, not just because they are happier but because they exemplify the company’s goals and values.
Creating a culture of employee engagement requires checking in with employees to ensure that the company mission aligns with the ways that people currently work and the ways that they want to work.
Engaged employees live your company values every day and are recognised for it. Remember to celebrate your engaged employees!
“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”
— Doug Conant
The Risk of Disengaged Employees
Did you know that more than half of employees are at a high risk of turnover? Research by Glassdoor reported that 53% of employees are confident that if they quit or lost their current job, they would be able to find a comparable position within six months. This indicates one thing: if you don’t give employees a compelling reason to stay, they will find another job that does!
Competition for top talent is fierce in the current market and the cost of training new hires is often steep. You can’t afford to not engage your employees.
How to Engage Employees
As leaders, you must constantly focus on the growth of your teams. You must work to strengthen the capabilities of individuals that can help make the team more effective, creating an environment of continuous innovation and initiative.
Empower to discover potential
The first step is to put your employees in situations that will build their confidence and strengthen their self-trust.
Empowering employees sounds simple, but it requires a leader to let go, step back and observe. Be a confident leader – allow your employees to fail, then pick them up and rebound. Employees engage when they are empowered to explore endless possibilities.
Share your success to build their momentum
Rather than enjoy your leadership success alone, share it with your employees and allow them to experience it with you. Sharing your success and making your employees feel important is a sign of trust that organically creates engagement.
Employees want to support their leaders when a leader is transparent enough so share success and failures. Employees don’t need leaders that are perfect – they want leaders to be open and share the journey with them. Collaboration drives engagement and creates an environment of significance for everyone.
Strive to learn more
If you would like to find out more about improving employee engagement, a great place to start is our blog on 7 Training Tips for Great People Management. We work with a broad range of clients, from professional services to manufacturing, hospitality and retail, and offer a completely bespoke service. Please get in touch to have an initial call or meeting to discuss your circumstances.
