Running a business and being in charge of a company comes with a lot of challenges and difficulties. You are not only the main person to consult on everything and the one who issues orders and sets out plans, but also the person to blame if something goes wrong. What is more, you are not just in charge of the company as a building and assets but people who have helped you get to where you are. Employees are the most important part of any business since without them the board and the rest of the upper management, including the owner, would not be able to do anything.
With all of that being said, you have to ensure that your employees are happy and that they are doing a good job. Of course, the latter can never exist or even be possible if the former is lacking. A happy employee is an engaged and hardworking employee, so the recipe seems clear enough and easy to follow. But how do you know if your employees are happy? Well, you could try an employee engagement initiative and hope it is successful enough. More precisely, you should make sure it is successful.
About Employee Engagement
Source: freepik.com
Employee engagement is becoming increasingly important in most industries and markets, but it is the digital world that seems to be doing it the most. There is a perfectly good reason for that because the world of digital businesses lacks something others do not. With a physical distance between the company and employees often spanning thousands of kilometers, how can you keep them engaged with the company and ensure they are an integral part of it just like they would be if they were all in the same building? This is a relevant question, as research shows that more engaged employees are happier and much more productive at work. This is the reason that many companies are heavily investing in an employee engagement initiative from Effectory. However, just like other company objectives, not all initiatives are created equal and they often require evaluation and checking. How can you make sure that you are keeping track of it all the right way and reaping the benefits that come with it? Read on to learn more.
Make use of the right tooling is a good start
Source: freepik.com
Like every other field in any business, there is a tool meant for this that will help you do things better and more optimally. Of course, there is the possibility of an overkill when it comes to tooling, but, on the other hand, you can not start an engagement initiative without one. Since you need to keep track of progress, monitor the actions of the employees, and see if they affect the engagement of employees, you have to start somewhere and use the right means along the way.
Qualitative means to understand engagement
When it comes to people, it is important to build a personal relationship. This is especially true in modern times where there is much more focus put on the happiness and satisfaction of people, as well as their overall acceptance and social interactions. This holds for understanding their work engagement as well as the managers who have a good relationship with employees can have an open discussion with them no matter the topic. There are certain questions that could be asked which would greatly help in building such relationships, which include but are not limited to:
- How do you feel about your current role?
- What do you think about the company’s objectives and priorities?
- Do you feel the company is on track to achieving its objectives?
- What are the current challenges in your role?
- What would be the first thing you would improve?
Once you ask these questions, the employees will not only realize that you care about the company and their role but their well-being as well. You may get more insight into their daily operations and get crucial knowledge about what needs to be improved. All of this serves to build longer-lasting and more trusting bonds between the management and the workers.
From questions to actions
Source: freepik.com
It is easy to understand how these questions could help a manager understand how the employee feels, but what they also do is help the manager to mitigate some of the challenges, resulting in better engagement from the employee. These interviews can be held in free format, but there is also the option of using a special, dedicated tool. This tool can help you come up with a structure of even more questions and leverage a vast database. Eventually, you will be able to ask more specific things and allow your employees other ways in which they can open up and share.
Quantitative tools for a holistic view
It is also possible to have insights on a larger scale and not just with individual engagements with each employee. A good example is the use of a survey that all of your workers will complete at the same time. With many employee engagement tools out there, you can choose different tooling options to support. Do however take into account the maturity of the tools. Not only do they provide survey templates, but they also come with reporting and dashboards to create insights into the data retrieved. Even more importantly, they can provide follow-up actions you could take in order to kick-start the engagement initiatives. Based on their vast experience, they have recommendations for lots of cases you may be experiencing and have the need of. Tools like Empuls helps companies of all sizes build an engaged and happy workforce.
Benchmark using the employee engagement index
Source: freepik.com
When you are finally on your way with your brand new initiative, you can see how others perform using the employee engagement index. This helps you to benchmark the maturity of your organization against peers in the same industry and see how well you are doing in comparison to your biggest competitors. Not only does this give you an indication of your current level, but it also provides insights into how you can further improve the engagement and become an industry leader, both in some aspects of the business and overall.
