Do you know if your employees feel valued, respected and confident in their work?
Do you know if your employees feel well rewarded and secure in their job?
These are all key reasons for high or low employee engagement levels and this is a really important pillar in the success of your business.
Getting the answers to these questions may feel tricky, there’s historically a “them and us” culture in businesses which makes employees feel like they can’t really be honest about how engaged they are (or are not). Subsequently employers feel like they can’t really ask.
To quote Richard Branson: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”. Considering this, how much time and effort do you put into keeping your customers happy? And how does that compare to the same when it comes to keeping your employees happy? Most of us have got used to asking clients for feedback on our service, but how many of us are asking our employees for feedback?
To kick start an employee engagement program you need to ask the right questions and use a tool that your employees feel comfortable using, e.g. a questionnaire or a survey or an open discussion group. Remember this is just the starting point, it will bring out some headlines for further discussion. As well as asking your team how they feel about their work and working environment, take the time to find out what’s important to them. It’s not always about wanting more, it might be that they want something different. For example they may be happy with the number of hours they work, but they would benefit from some flexibility in working hours to fit around childcare.
Feedback from your employees not only gives you the triggers for conversation, it gives you an opportunity to engage in deeper conversations and the chance to include everyone in the outcomes. Employee forums are a great way to initiate informal chat in a safe environment and allow employees to share what’s important to them.
There is a mountain of inspiration to be found in an employee engagement plan with rewards and talent recognition which has been built by the very people it’s designed to motivate!
