The Key Enablers of Employee Engagement
According to a study conducted by the 2009 MacLeod review, there are four key enablers of employee engagement.
- Mission and core values of the organisation – A vision and purpose for the company to exist that employees can align with.
- Leadership that communicates the vision to the employees.
- Line Managers that empower their employees.
- Employee Voice throughout the organisation to ensure employees feel they are contributing
Ensuring your company is working towards meeting those key enablers can go a long way to increase your employee engagement. Before we get into them in more detail let’s review what employee engagement is.
What is Employee Engagement?
The term Employee Engagement is largely used without real connection as to what it means. In a work capacity, in its truest form, the definition of Employee Engagement is “how engaged and connected an employee is, to the role they perform with your company.”
It could be said that this is created by the culture of an organisation, but this is not strictly true. Firstly, contrary to popular belief, companies rarely have a culture. Teams have culture. This is not to say there is not a framework being lead from the top, but it’s more to say that actual cultures are created within their specific teams.
Secondly, companies and employees need to reconcile that there is a large element of personal responsibility aligned with employee engagement. Companies may be doing all the right things in creating employee engagement within a workplace, but if the employee is not connected or aligned to the vision of the organisation, then the engagement will be affected.
Why is Employee Engagement Important?
When employees are engaged within their role, the benefits to employees and companies are significant. In the broadest sense employees that are engaged with their job are happier, healthier, and more productive — the data confirms this. From a company perspective, the more engaged your staff are, the better the company will perform on nearly all metrics.
On the flip side, the cost of disengaged employees is predicted to have cost the UK economy a staggering £340 billion a year and this is why prioritising your employee engagement is essential to your company.
So how can companies avoid being in a position where a large proportion of employees are not engaged or connected to their work?
7 Steps to Improving Employee Engagement
1. Create a Compelling Employee Value Proposition
An strong Employee Value Proposition can attract the best talent to your company. This is something unique about your company that attracts top talent. When designing a compelling Employee Value Proposition, companies should be thinking in one of two ways:
Firstly, what can your company offer its employees that no one else can offer and is unique to you. Or secondly, if it is difficult for you to be unique, how can you clearly become best in class in a specific area that sets you apart from your competitors.
Nike are an example of a company that does this well. As explained in this guide by Happi Team, Nike want to attract individuals that are aligned to their purpose and values as an organisation. They offer a range of unique benefits to attract people to their organisation, the main one of which includes their world renowned Nike Sports Research Lab which is not only used for research but is also provides facilities for employees to use. It ensures that for every role, whether it be sales, finance, manufacturing or procurement, Nike have an eager and proactive pool of talent knocking on their doors to become part of their organisation. Imagine the recruitment costs your company could save with this strategy!
2. Invest in Senior Management Development and Change the Hierarchy Paradigm
According to Gallup, the most important measurement of employee engagement is intrinsically linked to the direct relationship that employee has with their line management. In fact, 50% of individuals that leave their work leave because of their boss.
Companies often promote employees to recognise their work. However, not every employee has the skills, or want, to lead a team. The qualities required to lead a team might be extremely different to the qualities required to perform a job. Without the right training and development the employee often ends up out of their depth. For those employees that do wish to develop and advance into leadership positions, it’s imperative that there is robust training and development plans in place to strengthen their leadership skills. This shouldn’t just be one week course on leadership but should be an integrated development plan over an extended period.
For those employees who do not wish to be team leaders, it is our belief that companies should explore different ways to remunerate or acknowledge those employees for the amazing quality of work they produce. This can include raising the remuneration bar for high performers or incentivising those employees with other rewards. Naturally, any incentivisation should be structured throughout the company, but the concept of changing the paradigm where employees do not have to be giving leadership positions to be rewarded is a good objective.
3. Communicate Your Vision, Values and Expected Behaviours
Having a clear vision and values is important for all companies. No matter the size. Unfortunately, it often happens that companies spend significant time and investment in creating their vision and values, but very little time in communicating them.
Have you ever tried a Vision and Values test within your company? Simply ask your employees to vocalise one of your company values and it’s expected behaviour. In our experience employees can rarely list more than 1-2 of their companies’ core values. This is either because they are not aligned or connected with the vision and values, or the values are passively communicated.
Your values and their behaviours should be integrated into everything you do such as your staff reviews, your weekly meetings and your conflict resolutions. Consistency is key when it comes to reinforcing your values. Most companies will have a monthly meeting, and this provides a good opportunity to implement the Vision and Values test or highlight one value each month.
4. Employee Voice
One of the most important components of creating employee engagement is ensuring employees have a voice, and they feel they have some level of autonomy and control over their day-to-day work life. There are several ways this can be achieved. One important component is having regular conversations between employee and line manager. Whether weekly or biweekly, when done well this creates a foundation of trust. With trust as the foundation, companies should then integrate other initiatives such as:
- Employee forums like Workplace, Slack or Teams
- Pulse Surveys to gauge moods.
- Annual employee survey coupled with staff reviews.
All off these tools create a comprehensive range of feedback, which provides a voice and input from employees.
5. Employee Benefits Package
When people think of employee engagement, they automatically think of employee benefits. As you can see, employee benefits play a lesser role in employee engagement than you may have originally thought but there’s no doubt they still play a vital role.
There are some key reasons behind this. Firstly, they represent an opportunity for an interaction between the employer and employee. As explained in our guide to communicating employee benefits, companies should utilise a range of methods for this, but should prioritise human to human delivery.
Secondly, a comprehensive employee benefits plan provides a blanket of support to employees across a range of areas. Bigmore Benefits have a bespoke framework we have designed called The Four P’s which covers four key elements in creating a comprehensive employee benefits package.
In the SME space, many companies are hesitant to pay for employee benefits. It’s important to remember, employee benefits are an investment and not a cost. This doesn’t have to be expensive.
Your employees will value and understand when your company is investing as much as it can within their budget. Intent counts for a lot!
6. Health & Wellbeing
2023 saw the highest levels of sickness and absenteeism for many years in the UK. This is with the backdrop of companies investing more in health and wellbeing initiatives than ever before. So why isn’t this increased health and wellbeing investment not translating into reduced absenteeism?
Companies should be thinking very carefully about their Health and Wellbeing offering and focus on strategy and outcomes instead of the level investment. In relation to employee engagement, the more companies can support their people with their health and wellbeing and help influence healthy lifestyle and behaviours in key areas, the better your employee engagement will be. For more specifics on what a strong Health and Wellbeing offering looks like, watch our recent Health and wellbeing video.
7. Test and Measure
Lastly, it’s important that companies should have a robust and comprehensive way to gather data and measure employee engagement. The better a company can measure employee engagement and act on the results, the more improvements can be made over time. This is also where listening and acting on your employee’s voice is essential. Even if companies cannot act immediately on employee’s feedback, employees are generally understanding if it’s clear that their suggestions or feedback is being listened to and considered. If they’re not being listened to, this is when you’ll see staff queuing up for the exit door!
One of the challenges we see with companies is their ability to gather and act on data. Many HR departments do not have the internal resources to implement systems to gather data, and they may lack the technical and analytical skills required. We believe many companies and HR Departments could really benefit from external support in this area, at least to ensure the set up and ongoing maintenance of the data is robust.
Bigmore Benefits have an affiliation with Pink Jelly who specialise in this area. As Lara from Pink Jelly explains:
Chat with Us to Maximise Your Employee Engagement
Employee engagement requires a consistent effort with many on going processes, communications and assessments involved. It can be a big task to get it right. Bigmore Benefits are unique as we act as a Benefits and Engagement partner. Working in this way means that we can run, administer, and communicate all your benefit and engagement needs, but we can also have an objective view in working with HR departments to maximise engagement.
Every company has different Benefit and Engagement needs. To have a chat about yours and learn how Bigmore Benefits can work in partnership to supercharge your employee engagement, fill out the contact form below.
Article by Dave Sykes
Employee Benefits & Engagement Director, Bigmore Benefits
To improve your employee engagement in partnership with Bigmore Benefits, fill out the form below.
