Article: Keep employees engaged, empowered and motivated

Employee Engagement

Keep employees engaged, empowered and motivated

There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organizations overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. - Jack Welch
Keep employees engaged, empowered and motivated

Employee engagement is a situation where workers feel mentally and emotionally connected to their jobs, their managers, their co-workers and to the organization’s vision, mission and goals.  They are dedicated to their jobs and are more than willing to walk the extra mile in their roles, thus helping their firms to succeed.    

Studies show that organizations are able to outperform their competitors and are better at fostering innovation and creativity, consistently thriving and growing and are able to enhance their employees’ skills, abilities, talent, energy, efforts, and passion.  Here is looking at some of the best practices for employee engagement.

Strategic plans

Leadership and the management should make it a point to include this in their strategic plans and the overall organization’s mission and vision.  This should percolate down to every level of the workforce so that this is understood to be a key factor for the success of the firm.

Vision and mission statements

Senior leadership should be able to communicate very clearly the organization’s mission and vision statements so that employees are very clear about these guiding principles.  It would also greatly benefit if employees are made to understand how their roles contribute to the overall success of the firm.

The workforce should be able to see the bigger picture and take pride in their contributions, that can spur employee engagement efforts.

Leadership

Senior leadership or management should be inspirational, enthusiastic, visible and accessible and should regularly send out a message of the organization’s goals, that reinforces the company’s values and vision.  They should be able to 'walk the talk', lead by example in their professional and personal behavior and should be able to engage in open and honest discussions during difficult times.

Employee surveys

Do not ignore Employee Satisfaction Surveys, especially those that have something negative to say about the organization or work methods.  Even if you cannot bring about a change to the employee requirements, explain to the employee the reasons for not implementing those changes.  The employee is sure to understand the reasons behind the organization’s thinking and policies.  Encourage employees to share their stories, their thoughts, exchange ideas and participate in debates and discussions, either on a one-on-one basis or through public forums.  The organization should make efforts to listen to the voice of employees.  This will surely enhance employee engagement.

A rewards and recognition program

It is imperative to have a robust rewards and recognition program that applauds top performers and contributors in meeting business objectives and exemplifying the values of the organization.  A formal or informal mentoring program to help employees achieve their career goals also works towards achieving employee satisfaction.  

Enablement and empowerment

Employees who are given a fair amount of responsibility, the tools to succeed, opportunities, an autonomous environment where they are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them and allowing them to make decisions that affect their work – all these are factors that keep employees motivated and engaged to give off their best to the organization.

Employee engagement is a major challenge for companies and organizations worldwide, in spite of such programs in place.  This does not mean that the efforts should stop.  There are tremendous potential benefits of enhanced employee engagement that help in high performance, higher productivity, the ability to retain top talent and attract new talent, operating margins, increased profitability and revenue growth rates.  

There is clear evidence that employee engagement is strongly connected to the performance of an organization, productivity, retention, and growth. There are tremendous benefits that a firm can enjoy, if only they engage in a sound employee engagement program.

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Topics: Employee Engagement, Strategic HR

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