The future of employee engagement: Lessons from experience

Two hundred employees. USD 2.3 Billion revenues. That works out to USD11Million per employee. The Finnish mobile gaming giant Supercell has not just nailed its secret sauce but an entire four-course meal on employee engagement! According to their CEO, they run their company like a sports team where the actual players are the superstars. They build the games with total autonomy – and the leaders just focus on the type of company they want to build and nurture.

Employee engagement is a term that goes back decades — a factor that pundits agree is pivotal to business outcomes and customer loyalty. Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workforce states that only 15 percent of the global workforce feels truly engaged, and that employee disengagement costs the global economy USD 7 Trillion in productivity loss. 

Is it time to deep dive into employee engagement in a more relevant way? Or to reimagine and rewrite the rules of engagement for a multi-generational and multi-dimensional workforce in a disruptive business landscape?

Ultimately, it is all about how willingly the employee wraps his individual persona around his company’s brand – and the equal willingness with which the organization celebrates the employee’s individuality. One literally builds the other. The Zappos ‘Coworker Bonus Program’ is an example of how employees define the brand. Employees choose to award bonuses to co-workers who impress them by going beyond what is expected of them. Southwest’s new uniform design for employees was created by their employees. LinkedIn creates brand ownership in their employees by actively involving themselves in HR hackathons to constantly re-design the work that they do. 

The changing demographics (millennials are estimated to comprise 76 percent of the global workforce by 2025) and technology disruption will no doubt influence the way employee engagement will be strategized. The core of employee engagement, however, will hinge on employee pride. When employees have pride, they own their responsibility with fulfilled commitment and spread their individual aspirations over their team’s and organization’s success. Engagement becomes part of their DNA. 

At WNS, we recently flagged off the Millennial Council through which we pick ideas from our millennial employees. This council comprises 16 women and eight men from eight countries and nine business units. With close access to the CEO and other senior leaders of the company, the Council members are tasked to help the WNS brand stay in alignment with changing trends. They also own action plans for the organization in their chosen areas that include employee engagement, corporate social responsibility, technology and enhancing the company’s brand presence. Diversity and inclusion is another powerful cultural factor that can evoke pride in employees to identify themselves with the employee brand. WNS launched a program called ‘Centurion’ in 2017 to proactively develop women managers, and build next-role capabilities for new and stretch career opportunities for them.

The changing demographics and technology disruption will no doubt influence the way employee engagement will be strategized – but the core of employee engagement, however, will hinge on employee pride

The era of employee engagement has been overtaken by the new age of employee experience. This has brought about a sea change in how the organizational culture is viewed and practiced. The experiential aspect of engagement has broken hierarchical walls to make it social. Building culture has now transcended to providing the means and answers to how employees can make a meaningful impact through sticky relationships with people and purpose. Google’s social mission in making the world a better place is an integral part of their culture and has bound employees into an ecosystem they believe in. Southwest’s culture begins right at the time of recruitment of their employees. They go beyond hiring for skill and look for three traits that they believe are very important to culture — a warrior spirit, a servant’s heart, and a fun-loving attitude.

Finding the right-balanced cultural quotient based on demographic segmentation of individual organizations is an exciting challenge for the HR. Such a culture will treat employees like customers. Employee journey maps will be optimized. Technology, tools, and apps will be experimented with for reimagined communication, productivity, learning, wellness, and information-sharing. Employees will be provided time and autonomy to explore and pursue their passion. It will be a culture that will look beyond profits — yet will reap better dividends through high premium placed on innovative learning, career development, inclusivity and work flexibility.

A year ago, at WNS, we introduced #WiNS a digital performance engagement platform with 24/7 access for all our employees. They could document all their accomplishments and appreciation, view feedback and ratings, know their development needs and coaching opportunities, and plan for their next roles and levels. It brought back the pride of performance and our performance engagement scores have surged from 3.6 to 4.3 on a 5-point scale. The productivity of employees, supervisors and HR in performance management has gone up by 32 percent. Process efficiency and cycle time have improved by 31percent. With the success we have seen with #WiNS internally, we have now evolved it further for the market as a product called WNS TalentTurfTM. TalentTurf enables the convergence of the individual employee brand with that of the organization – and with inspired involvement. It incorporates next-gen digital technologies and a social media look-and-feel that resonates with the millennial employee segment to create engaged interaction. It is equally serious in purpose and context. A deep understanding of people has gone into WNS TalentTurfTM – anytime/real-time coaching conversations and real-time analytics-driven insights create transparency and trust. 

While learning and development are certainly integral to organizational culture, I have called them out separately as they are huge factors that inspire employee experiences. They provide purpose, motivation, self-awareness, and maturity for future leadership. Take the case of Yelp, where everyone has stretch roles that go further than their current capabilities and responsibilities. Personal development and nurturing coworkers are incentivized by promotions to roles that play to their innate and developed strengths. Needless to say, Yelp has an extremely engaged workforce and a ‘mentoring’ culture. 

At WNS, thousands of youngsters who join us as generalists, graduate into being domain and industry specialists through our in-house domain university - The Gateway. Our on-demand and personalized learning programs are flexible and well-knit into employee aspirations, opportunities, and career roadmaps. ’Aspire’, launched in 2016, maps the critical roles and future talent needs with competencies, and identifies and nurtures high-potential employees in the organization to success. We are proud that 90 percent of our frontline managers are home-grown and our manager-level attrition ranks as one of the lowest in the industry. 

The message is loud and clear. Engagement in the `here and now' is a thing of the past – get cracking on re-designing experiences for the longer-term

Engaging employees through a fulfilling experience in the future will call for new thinking and practices. The four-pronged ‘employee needs’ model that Intuit adopts is a good example of how relevance, simplicity and authentic context can be interwoven. Basic needs of security and justice form the foundational base, on which rest other needs… such as worth needs (of accomplishment and esteem), connection needs (relationships and belonging), and inspiration needs (identity and meaning). Policies and practices for superior employee experiences will be created around these needs. 

The message is loud and clear. Engagement in the ‘here and now’ is a thing of the past — get cracking on re-designing experiences for the longer-term.