Employee Satisfaction Doesn’t Always Equal Engagement

Most companies think of employee satisfaction as an important goal to keep employees happy. GALLUP^® looks at this differently and introduced the concept of Employee Engagement which they define as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.”

Measuring employee engagement helps you understand if your employees are actively engaged with their work or if they’re simply putting in their time. Research indicates the right approach to employee engagement is to learn what to do to improve your employees’ connection to their work and your company.

Why Employee Engagement is Important?

Studies show only 29% of the U.S. workforce is considered engaged. That means there’s a lot of room for improvement that can positively improve your organization’s performance. These areas of improvement include:

• Decreased absenteeism
• Lower employee turnover
• Higher quality
• Increased customer loyalty
• Improved profitability

How much would it be worth to your organization if you could see significant improvements in these areas? It would be extremely valuable.

Steps to Improve Employee Engagement

Engaging employees isn’t necessarily tied to compensation or promotions. The following are examples of steps you can take to improve employee engagement in your organization:

• Purpose and Meaning – Employees want to work at organizations that have a clear purpose and provide meaning that aligns with their values. Share these topics with employees and describe how they impact these areas.
• Employee Development – Employees want to work where they have opportunities to develop and grow. This doesn’t always mean promotion but can include training, development and projects that align with employees’ career goals. Provide these opportunities and talk about them with your employees.
• Someone Who Cares – Employees want to know that someone is looking out for them and supporting them personally. This is usually their direct manager. GALLUP^®’s research indicates most employees leave their jobs because of their manager. To employees, their manager represents the company. Do your managers know how important it is to be supportive and available to their employees? Train your managers about employee engagement and things they can do to support employees.
• Regular Feedback – Providing feedback to employees is hard work. It takes time but it’s worth it. Managers should have a scheduled one-on-one sessions with employees regularly. Whether weekly or monthly, it’s dedicated time to discuss how employees are doing, what challenges they are facing and what can you do as their manager to help them.
• Work with Strengths – In the workplace, every employee has different strengths and managers need to know what those strengths are and how to position employees to work in areas or on projects that use their strengths. GALLUP^® has a product called the Clifton StrengthsFinder® which is an assessment that can be taken online by employees to identify their top strengths.

As a leader in your organization, developing strategies to improve employee engagement will be essential for managing the future workforce. Ultimately, this can differentiate your organization in today’s highly competitive employment market and be the key to your long-term success!

Peak Results’ free Business Checkup tool can help evaluate the health of your business and we provide Business Coaching to help you get the results you want from your business.