Learnings from the world of employee engagement
The most successful teams are those that share a strong emotional connection to the goals of the team, and to the success of each other - John Goulding of Workvivo discusses the keys to success of employee engagement
With over 100,000 employees communicating and engaging across the Workvivo Communication Platform, we’ve taken some of the most successful elements of employee engagement from our customers and distilled them into 6 things to consider.
Communication is key
Continuous, relevant and appropriate communication is a key driver of employee engagement. As such, employee communication apps that are intuitive and allow for a more “social” and bi-directional employee user experience are now considered must have. Not just for improving internal communications, but also for elevating employee engagement by making employees feel like they have a voice and can join the conversation.
Connect employees to organisational goals and values
Defining organisational purpose and then creating logos that are printed onto office walls is the easy part, but how do you sustainably connect employees to this? There must be a systemic way of linking employee behaviours and activities to goals, so that you can bring the goals of the organisation to life. This is best achieved by linking internal communications, both those published by the organisation and by employees, to organisational goals.
Recognition should be spontaneous, visible to peers and linked to achievement of goals
We all understand the positive impact of a simple act of recognition. What is less widely understood is the importance of how the recognition is delivered. Giving a ‘Shout-Out’ to an employee on a 1:1 basis is nice, but doing that in a very public setting, especially in front of that employee’s peers, is game-changing for that employee. Doing that ‘in the moment’ rather than as part of a list of congratulations later, is even more compelling. Finally, linking the recognition to a company goal or value is the icing on the cake and serves to increase both engagement and alignment.
Most company recognition programs are not spontaneous, often requiring layers of approval. They often don’t support linking recognition to organisational goals, and there are no notification when recognition is given and received, so that the recipients’ peers have no awareness of the achievement.
Encourage community
Equally important to the emotional connection an employee has to the organisation is the emotional connection an employee has to their team and team members. We are social animals! Organisations should recognise and encourage the existence of communities within the organisation. Communities can be office locations and/or divisions and teams. They can equally be groups of employees that share a common professional or personal interest. Digital tools should be provided to encourage the creation of communities that drive collaboration, knowledge sharing, increase camaraderie, and ultimately elevate employee engagement.
Measure
It’s vital to be able to measure your employee engagement level and related engagement drivers, not just at a point in time but also how they are trending over time. Usage analytics from an internal communications app can also serve as one strong indicator of the level of employee engagement. Employee polls and surveys can be used effectively to monitor engagement, but please keep it simple. We need to move on from complicated 50 question annual employee surveys that take months to interpret, learn anything from and then take action on. Shorter and more frequent “pulse” surveys coupled with more ad-hoc employee feedback via polls is now widely regarded as best practice.
…and finally…
Encourage a “How are you?” culture. We all have lives outside of work, some, all or none of which we may want to share with our colleagues. But creating a culture where employees ask their colleagues that question, actively listen to and are genuinely interested in the response, will help to foster a deeper sense of community and could more positively improve employee engagement than all of the other tips combined.