Employee Engagement drives business performance. Managers and leaders should keep employee engagement as a top business priority. The way leaders interact with employees can have an impact on engagement and organisational performance. When your employees are disengaged it affects the performance of your business significantly. Truly engaged employees are willing to put in more effort in their work exceeding the normal call of duty. The only way to know the level of employee engagement in your organisation is by carrying out employee engagement surveys using scientifically validated instruments.
Researchers have indicated that engaged employees are those who are emotionally connected to their organisation. Engaged employees work with passion and feel proud to be associated with their employer. Engaged employees care about the success of their organisation.
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Employees who are not engaged on one hand are “mentally checked out” or literally sleepwalking through working hours. Such people are not focused and tend to put more effort into activities rather than tangible outputs. You may also find that there are employees who are actively disengaged. Such employees are acting out their unhappiness in the process undermining what engaged employees are trying to achieve.
An Aon Survey (2017) found that only 27% of all employees worldwide were highly engaged in their job. In the last national survey that we did (2018), we found out that only 30% of employees are value creators, 31% are core contributors, 27% are aligned skeptics, 7% are lost believers and 5% are disengaged. The appropriate trend is to have most of your employees in the value creators and core contributors quadrants and zero in the lost believers and disengaged quadrants. Factors that impact the level of employee engagement include leadership, strategic direction, communication, relationship with work colleagues, supervision, learning & development, remuneration, commitment & loyalty, job design, satisfaction, intention to stay, vigor, dedication, and absorption.
Best employers strive to make sure that all the above dimensions are at the forefront of their people strategy. Executives should strive to always identify the level of employee engagement in their organisations periodically and find the reasons for low engagement. They also need to come up with action plans to address any areas of concern identified in the survey.
A properly done employee engagement survey should include a deeper analysis showing the connection between employee engagement and important business outcomes. This is very important because employee engagement is not an end in itself.
For assistance on how to carry out an employee engagement survey for your organisation – contact Taurai Masunda. Taurai Masunda is a Business Analytics Consultant [Employee Engagement Survey Expect] at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. https://www.linkedin.com/in/taurai-masunda-b3726110b/ Phone +263 4 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number +263 779 320 189 or email: taurai@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com