Employee engagement is one of the most important business issues that affects an organization’s growth and retention. Employees are more likely to stay with a company if they are involved in their work environment. Businesses require a sophisticated solution, tactics, and resources to boost employee engagement.
Employee engagement is defined as having a clear grasp of how an organization fulfils its purpose, core values and objectives, how it is changing to better achieve those objectives, and being given a voice in that journey to contribute ideas and express perspectives that are considered as decisions are made.
Is your organization looking for solutions on improving employee engagement?
Now in your preferred language Disengagement at the workplace is a problem that majority of managers have to deal with! According to a recent employee survey by ET, a whopping 59% of employees do not feel appreciated at work.
That means that over half of the total employees in organizations feel that their efforts are not valued and that they are not getting due employee recognition for their valuable contribution and are regarded as disengaged employees. Temporary increments, bonuses and perks may work by boosting the morale of an employee for a few days or weeks, but are ineffective in the long run.
Employee engagement levels run low, and that will impact productivity, satisfaction and ultimately retention of talented workers in the organization.
Hence, it is vital for managers to capitalize on the various benefits that can be accrued through high engagement levels and increase the number of engaged employee and must look into the various employee engagement solutions.
Significance of employee engagement
Activities, games, and events aren’t the only ways to keep employees engaged. Performance is driven by employee engagement.
Employees that are engaged take a holistic view of the firm and understand their role, where they fit in, and how they contribute. As a result, you’ll be able to make smarter decisions. Companies that have a highly engaged workforce outperform their competitors.
They earn more per share (EPS) and bounce back faster from recessions and financial losses. When it comes to growth and innovation, engagement is a significant differentiator.
Employee engagement has been shown to reduce staff turnover, increase productivity and efficiency, improve customer service and retention, and increase revenues and finally improve employee performance.
Employee engagement is a critical component of any personnel management plan. Integrated personnel management is being adopted by businesses as a way to share information, integrate systems, and encourage staff. Processes like recruitment, cultural development, and retention become considerably easier when employees are continually engaged throughout the employment cycle.
Finally, having an engaged staff makes it easier to run a firm and allows you to focus on higher-value tasks like innovation, process improvement, continuous performance management and professional development. In a word, this is why employee engagement is so critical for corporate success.
Approach for Increasing employee engagement
Start with employee communication if you’re wondering why employee engagement is so crucial and how to increase it.
Employee communication is still the most important employee engagement strategy for fostering strong working relationships and increasing productivity. Employee trust can be quickly built by companies that provide clear, precise communication.
A strategic engagement component should be included in every onboarding policy. In every business, new hires anticipate the same amount of attention during onboarding process as they had during the hiring process.
Workers can be engaged during onboarding process if all necessary resources are available on day one and new employees are socialized into the company culture. Peer networking and the buddy system are two activities that can help with this.
Compensation is another factor that influences employee engagement, especially when it is connected to performance. Employees are more likely to feel devoted to their organization and driven to succeed if they are compensated for great performance. Employee engagement should be a continuous effort for a successful organization.
It should be a part of every interaction that businesses have with their employees and should be incorporated into the overall talent management policy.
Relationship between HR software and employee engagement
Employees will be motivated to work diligently when HRM systems are integrated with employee engagement features, because HRMS allow HR managers to acknowledge even the smallest details, such as an employee’s onboarding experience, providing consistent employee feedback on their work, and showing appreciation when they do their job well.
Another important feature of HRMS software is the learning management system, which enables businesses to provide employees with the necessary training and skills.
This feature not only allows employees to gain the necessary knowledge and abilities, but it also helps build in them a sense of worth and involvement.
HRMS software guarantees that everyone in the firm understands the many policies, allowing them to operate more efficiently. Employees just need to log in to the platform, and the HR staff may easily include new regulations under one or more parts of the HRMS program.
Workers can learn about their benefits, such as the company’s leave policy, provident fun plans, and employee benefit policies, using this employee engagement approach.
The various employee engagement approaches using HR software are as follows:
1. Enterprise Social Networking
Employee engagement may be improved by having an effective internal communication system in place. It is necessary to place a greater emphasis on listening and to listen continuously. Employees’ ideas and opinions are valuable, and listening to them can benefit the company in a variety of ways.
A meaningful integration of people, processes, and back-end systems is what enterprise social networking involves. It is not an enterprise social network if your employees just create activity streams in such a system.
The upper management must ensure that corporate social networking is all about summarizing data from back-end enterprise systems and presenting it in a way that catches employees’ attention and encourages them to interact with it.
There should be an integrated internal platform for employees to connect over professional work related matters. This will promote better overall employee cycle communication platform in the organization, without any barriers or hindrances.
An enterprise social networking system can lead to fruitful interactions and brainstorming amongst employees as well as boost employee morale. It can also prove to be useful for networking with employees of different departments and cross functions.
2. Performance Management System
More regular performance feedback is one big shift that an HRMS may facilitate. Instead of saving information for that annual review, managers can use continuous recording of performance-related data to provide real-time feedback to employees: credit or correction where and when it’s necessary.
The more unique feedback tools, the more probable it is that the individual will find it relevant and actionable, resulting in a favorable influence on performance.
An HRMS employee database with integrated performance management capabilities gives a performance history for each employee across their whole employment – a wider picture with the ability to examine trends, patterns, and one-off blips.
There are periodic meetings between employees and their supervisors to provide constructive feedback regarding work performance and building employee morale.
Mentoring and Coaching are also effective ways of providing performance management feedback to employees to improve work productivity and acts as an effective employee engagement tactic.
Get higher employee engagement with the help of the best gamified HR software.
3. Reimbursement Management
Employee cost reimbursement software has represented a new age of simplicity. We currently live in a world where real-time reporting and approvals ensure correct and timely reimbursements and payments. Employees no longer have to preserve copies of receipts for every expense and manually enter the information into a direct report.
Employees often spend personal monetary funds for organization related tasks. Complex administrative procedures in reclaiming their money can leave employees demotivated and disgruntled.
Few employees take the time or make the effort to learn about the cost procedures in place to help them manage and govern their business-related purchases. Flexible policy design is possible with employee expenditure reimbursement software, which allows you to customize rules, set spending limits, and define approval processes.
The reimbursement procedure should be made seamless, simple and quick, so that employees do not have to go through a cumbersome and time consuming process to get reimbursed for money spent for organizational purposes.
4. Efficient Payroll
Payroll is frequently included within the functions of an HRMS these days. In terms of data, it makes perfect sense. Time and attendance, workforce scheduling, and absence management are all common HRMS features that provide the information needed to calculate payroll.
Because of its interdependency, an HRMS payroll means fewer errors. As a result, less time is spent by employees fixing such errors.
The compensation system of an organization should be fair, timely and in accordance to industry standards. Money acts as a huge motivator and drivers of employee satisfaction which helps them feel that they are getting adequate, well timed compensation, and thus they will be further propelled to put in their best at work.
Payroll can be linked to timesheet systems that track employee attendance or work time. This makes payroll computations much easier by automatically transferring information about hours worked into the payroll system.
Incentives, pay and benefits largely influence and mold employee behavior at the workplace as they are the key driver, and can help in increasing engagement levels exponentially.
5. Shift Planning
Work timings of employees should be regulated in an efficient manner to promote optimum productivity at the workplace. Employees should be assigned convenient shifts, customized according to their needs.
HRMS provides excellent work shift planning, allowing HR professionals to make informed decisions about staffing needs, extra time, on-call hours, work expenses, and more. The open HRMS Employee Shift Management can assist in overseeing employee work shift arrangements by effectively structuring them.
Shift policies should be uniform in nature, and weekly holidays should be given to all workers so as to rejuvenate themselves. Telecommuting and work from home are good options for remote employees with family commitments and will help in engaging workers to their work in a meaningful way.
Wrapping up
Employee satisfaction is not the same as employee engagement. Many businesses do “employee happiness” surveys, and CEOs talk about it, but the bar is set too low. A happy employee may come up to her 9-to-5 job without complaint, but may not work an extra mile for the overall growth of the organization.
Employees who are emotionally invested care about their work and the organizational culture . They don’t work for a paycheck or the next promotion; instead, they strive to achieve the organization’s goals and work towards goal progress.
Employee Engagement is the new buzzword in organizations today. In the current dynamic business world, it is essential that managers aim at maximizing engagement levels, in order to provide their organization a competitive advantage.
These simple strategies will go a long way in harnessing engagement levels at the workplace.
For an HR software that solves all 5 problems mentioned above as well as provides an employee engagement platform, get a free trial for sumHR to create a memorable employee experience from recruitment to exit, without burning a hole in their budgets.
You can also book a demo and get access to payroll, attendance management, recruit, performance management, HR Operations & More at sumHR. Be the HR Hero with sumHR.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is employee engagement in HR (human resource)?
Human resources team, on the other hand, plays a critical role in employee engagement at all levels. Yes, there are particular employee engagement roles and projects, but employee engagement is something that everyone in the human resources team should think about.
Employees must have fulfilling work, wonderful management, career opportunities, training, high compensation and reward packages, and alignment to company goals in order to stay engaged.
In order to attain high levels of employee engagement, you must first master all of the HR principles.
2. Benefits of employee engagement
The benefits of employee engagement are as follows:
- Teamwork is improved, which builds strong teams
- A boost in staff output
- Lower employee turnover and higher employee retention which ultimately improves employee commitment
- Achieving group goals which in turn help in achieving the employee engagement goals
- Absenteeism is reduced
- Workplace stress is less harmful
- As well as a reduced chance of burnout.
3. How to keep employees engaged in organizational activities
Employee engagement is an element of how you manage your success team, but it doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. Below mentioned are some pointers on how to keep employees engaged:
- Encourage employees to take time off, plan long weekends, and explore their interests outside of work. Ascertain that everyone feels free to log off early if their task for the day is complete. This would act as a strong employee engagement tool.
- An employee engagement survey is a fantastic method to find out how individuals feel about their jobs. Measuring employee engagement allows you to identify any concerns before they become more serious. Based on the results obtained through the regular survey as well as customizable survey, various employee engagement programs can be conducted.
- When your fellow employees believe they are making a significant contribution to the company’s goals, they will be more engaged. To begin with employee engagement activities, assist them in comprehending the goals. Then you can collaborate with them to create a set of aligned team goals and work on outback team building.
- One of the favorite tools used as engagement drivers is asking employees for feedback. This not only helps the employees feel an important part of the organization, but also provides real-time insights into the problems faced by them