How can you improve employee engagement in an organization

Hiring the right people for your company can be a challenging task. It consists of more than just ticking off boxes of required skills and negotiating salary. There are a lot of other factors that come into play during this process, from both the candidate, as well as the employer.

When a candidate chooses your company, they not only offer their skills and knowledge but also become emotionally invested in your company. They are determined to make the best of it. It’s only fair that you do too.

As an HR, you must curate the best experience for them—not just in the beginning but during their entire lifecycle in your company. You need to show them that you are as invested in them as they are in the company. You can’t just wash your hands off them by paying them salaries every month.

To create a fulfilling and inspiring experience for each of the employees, you need to be aware of the facts. You need to know what they need, want, and what they could benefit from which they may not know.

A holistic insight into your workplace engagement

Understanding your employees cannot be done in a half-baked manner—it has to be complete, or it can turn to a troublesome thing that can hurt both the employee and the company's reputation. The important thing to keep in mind is the need to break things down and ask the right questions.

Employee engagement is not only about conducting fun events once in a while. It's looking into every interaction an employee has during their tenure in the company along with their well-being, the relationship they share with their managers and team leads, how the workspace influences them, and more.

This is why most job seekers and companies focus more on the culture fit aspect than salary and perks. If an employee is unable to fit into a company’s culture seamlessly, they can find it very difficult to enjoy their time in that company. A bad fit can lead to disastrous results for both the employee and the company—making both of them unhappy.

Even if an employee seems to be a good fit for a company, HRs and leaders must make sure the complete experience of the employee is positive.

Humanizing the employee engagement framework

Leaders and HRs need to see their employees as humans with real emotions and necessities. They are not just their employee numbers as often seen in multinational companies. To bring a more humane aspect to this experience, leaders must take the time to get to know the employees better by talking with them and engaging with them in the form of some activities.

The employee engagement in a company can be optimized only when leaders adopt an employee-first attitude. They need to keep the individual in focus and never let revenues or profits dictate the employee’s well-being. Leaders must remember that the employee matters do matter. S/he must always put their efforts into trying to align an employee’s purpose and culture with that of the company for a more harmonic relationship.

Creating a positive journey for employees needs more than a humane perspective; they also need great management strategies. HRs must realize that the employee engagement journey does not start with the hiring but much before that. It is very easy to miss these stages of the journey.

According to Gallup, an employee’s journey can be divided into seven main stages:

• Attract
• Hire
• Onboard
• Engage
• Perform
• Develop
• Depart

Leaders must come together with the HRs to study each stage of the journey closely and optimize the stages for the overall development and happiness of the employee.

“Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything—for better or for worse.”

- Simon Sinek

How do you enhance the employee engagement

Understanding each interaction an employee experiences during their lifetime in a company takes a lot of effort. You can’t do that by assuming things. You need to rely on hard data and analyze them to understand your employees. The only way to do so is by asking them. Of course, you can’t go around shooting questions at them every day, but you can certainly take the help of tools meant just for this.

Employee engagement platforms enable HRs and leaders to do so by helping them read between the lines and giving them a complete understanding of the employees and their needs. CultureMonkey allows HRs to increase employee engagement and empower employees by giving them a voice in multiple ways:

• Listen to them at every stage

HRs must make it a point to listen to the employees throughout their lifecycle in the company. One way of doing so is through CultureMonkey’s autopilot surveys that sends automated surveys to employees at crucial touch points in their journey.

The surveys are designed as per the stage of the employee lifecycle. This is so because employees face different problems at different stages of their journey and on some other factors like their age group, ethnicity, gender, and pay scale. Listening to them from their unique positions is the only way to understand them.

• Identify the blind spots

A lot of times, HRs and leaders miss out on minor but crucial details that could influence employee engagement greatly. It often becomes difficult for them to identify these details and work on them. The only way to do so is through participation from the employees.

Companies must encourage employees to send in their feedback to understand where there are problems so that they can solve them. CultureMonkey facilitates this through its feature of anonymous feedback and sentiment analysis. This enables HRs to be aware of all kinds of problems employees are going through while also mapping the average sentiment of employees in terms of the different aspects of their experience in the company.

• Analyze each sector of employees' life

CultureMonkey’s personalized reports offer minute details to HRs and leaders through an analysis of all the fifteen drivers making up an employee’s life at the workplace through monthly scores, and overall scores ever since the company started using the platform. These unique drivers act as the key to understanding and improving an employee’s overall experience in the company.

Everything from work-life balance to recognition and meaningful work is covered under these drivers. This is extremely useful for HRs, because studying these drivers every month helps to focus on improving the areas that aren't doing well, and in turn, leading to holistic development in the employee’s life.

The pandemic calls for an improved employee engagement

Since the pandemic started, things have been more difficult for companies. They have been struggling to survive while also making sure their employees don’t suffer. A lot of companies have announced indefinite work from home for their employees. But not everyone is as lucky. The ones working remotely too haven’t had a smooth journey since the past few months—the workload has doubled and work-life balance has taken a hit.

Problems like WiFi issues, laptops breaking down, or lack of home office supplies have been an issue for most employees. These problems have hindered their productivity and affected their mental health too.

During such times, HRs must step up and take charge of the situation. In most companies, HRs have teamed up with managers across different levels to make the best of these circumstances. Employee engagement platforms like CultureMonkey have been a boon to employees as well as the management, especially during these times.

Employees have been able to communicate their problems to their managers and team leaders through CultureMonkey’s anonymous feedback. HRs were also able to send customized surveys like COVID-19 surveys to their employees. These surveys helped the management understand the overall environment in the company and also gave an individual perspective to opinions or problems.

Companies can achieve true collaboration and improved employee experience only when there is an increase in employee engagement and employee well-being.