Irrespective of whether your business is going through a period of change or enjoying a consistent period of growth and steadiness, having engaged employees is paramount to your success.
Here are some sobering statistics as food for thought from the Gallup 2017 Global Workplace Study :
- Only 1 in 10 UK employees feel engaged
- A fifth of employees feel actively disengaged
- Engaged employees are 17% more productive
Just those three figures alone tell us that for a business to grow, keep its customers happy and its revenues high, it needs engaged and empowered employees.
SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL has extensive experience in providing employee engagement services. Here are just a few of our ideas on engagement and empowerment strategies for your business.
Hiring and Onboarding Strategy
Let’s start at the beginning. Hire employees that fit with your culture and expectations. Design the recruitment process and materials to reflect the organisation’s brand identity and values. Be clear about what a motivated employee looks like to you so that candidates can demonstrate their commitment to doing more than just turning up for their monthly payslip. Include an explanation of the company culture.
As for onboarding, engage and empower your new hires by giving them a better understanding of where they fit in and what different departments do. Connect senior managers and new hires during onboarding (e.g. via lunchtime Q&As), so they are approachable and accessible.
Health and Wellbeing Strategy
If your business doesn’t have this, it’s missing a trick. There is a close link between employee health/wellbeing and employee engagement, according to “The Wellness Effect: The Impact of Workplace Programs” from Humana:
- 89% of employees whose workplace has a wellness culture are happier at work
- 67% of employees who work for businesses that prioritise health and wellbeing are more engaged
Some ideas to encourage engagement include:
- Encourage breaks
- Provide healthy eating options
- Encourage healthy activities at work (lunchtime Pilates anyone?)
- Offer gym discounts
- Inform employees about their benefits (recruitment, onboarding, Yammer, intranet, newsletters)
Corporate organisations are increasingly interested to offer the my31Practices programme to employees as a demonstration of their interest in the ‘person’ rather then the ‘worker’.
Workplace Strategy
As part of your values-driven leadership, give thought to the work environment you’re providing for your employees. If your teams work in offices with little or no natural light and are in cramped environments, you can’t expect them to feel motivated and engaged.
Harvard Business Review found that when asked, workers expressed a strong desire for the basics:
- Good quality air
- Natural light
- Being permitted to personalise their work stations
These factors were the most significant influence on employee happiness and engagement.
Some ideas to provide a more motivating and engaging work environment include:
- Provide open ‘ideas’ spaces where employees can collaborate
- Ensure there is enough natural light
- Lose the work cubicles that isolate people from one another
- Be less uniform about workwear dress code
- Offer the opportunity for employees to work away from their usual desk
By giving your teams these small freedoms, you’re not only treating them like the adults they are but showing you trust them and care about their workplace environment.
SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL has worked with household names and smaller enterprises to introduce workplace empowerment strategies that work, time and again.
Online Communications Strategy
We’re not talking here about your approach to external communications via social media. All businesses need to acknowledge that social media is here to stay. By incorporating it into your engagement and empowerment strategy toolbox, you’re taking a more progressive approach to empowering your teams. Research from McKinsey shows that companies using social media platforms to engage their employees can increase the productivity and knowledge of their workers by 20-25%.
Some ideas to increase engagement via social media include:
- Invite employees to blog on your intranet and website
- Profile employees on your website and promote this on social media
- Populate your employees newsletter with employee-driven content
- Share good news via your social media platforms
SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL works collaboratively with companies to help them incorporate employee and empowerment goals into all of their business strategies.
Before We Go
By integrating your brand, mission and values into every aspect of employee engagement and empowerment you are living and breathing your commitment to keeping your employees happy, motivated and productive. Contact us today and find out how we can help you.