4 Easy Steps to Consistent Employee Engagement

Most professional services leaders and managers know how important employee engagement (EE) is as a key metric for success. Yet when questioned about current strategies, they often admit that there are significant gaps in their approach and means of assessing it.

1) Turnkey scalable system:

Therefore, I want to share with you a customisable turn-key solution to EE. It is not only applicable for large firms with HR department/s, but also for small to medium Practices who truly care about their staff.

You seldom hear about Talent Development Solutions that are highly scalable for all size firms, yet this is what is needed with a growing organisation. Leaders need a system that will grow with the practice; plus, a system that will fully support employee engagement from the beginning as a part of delivering quality organisational growth. ?

2) A thorough framework:

You may call me lazy, but in my view if someone has already done extensive research and discovered the key areas of EE, why would I need to reinvent the wheel? The following is a list of researched factors that have been found to impact the engagement levels of employees:

·???????Professional Development

·???????Opportunity for advancement

·???????Being appreciated for their work

·???????Wanting acknowledgement from their peers

·???????To be kept informed around what is happening in the business

·???????Wanting flexible work time

·???????Being offered Leadership Opportunities

·???????Opportunities for social interaction at work

·???????Being given more autonomy

·???????To be given feedback in a gentle and diplomatic manner

·???????Desiring quick pay increases

·???????Desirous of a stable career

·???????Wanting high pay

·???????A place to contribute through the collaboration of ideas

·???????To be straightforward when being communicated with

·???????To receive some form of support related to personal difficulties

·???????Wish to have a capable leader

·???????Have work/life balance

3) Remove the need for Managers to mindread:

If you want highly engaged employees, then managers need to have helpful engagement insights on each of their employees. We often expect managers to gather this themselves through their work interactions. But the reality is, it is not as simple as it sounds, and they are often too busy with operational matters.

Today this sort of data is easy to access through the technology of EE designed psychometric instruments. They can quickly collect valid and reliable data through a short online questionnaire pinpointing what managers need to know. For a start, how helpful would it be if a manager knew how important each employee felt (using a scale between 1 & 10), about each item in the dot point list above? ?

Furthermore, imagine if managers also knew how fulfilled each employee currently was concerning each listed item above, along with the focus areas to set goals in for improving engagement? Businesses are starting to catch on to what a game-changer this sort of data is for managers, to make the strategy of EE consistent, simple, and easy.

4) Practical action steps to higher engagement:

It is one thing to become aware that someone is unhappy and disengaged at work, but how does a manager address this? Hence, the final element in an effective engagement strategy is having clear steps to follow for managers. With clear steps in place, it eliminates the need for extensive training, while giving the opportunity for all staff to receive a consistent mutually beneficial engagement conversation toward better outcomes.

Although managers significantly impact upon EE, some research has unfortunately focussed too much blame on the manager. We need to bring back a balance so that the employee also has a part to play in their own engagement. Hence, effective steps must involve how the organisation will improve EE and highlight some responsibility to the employee, or it will create unreasonably entitled employees. ??

What is the Solution? ?

There is a turn-key solution that covers all the above in one easy to use process. It produces an “Employee Engagement and Expectations” report for a manager to use with each employee giving a narrative on each area. The turnkey system uses a cloud-based dashboard listing each employee for consistent year-on-year monitoring. A firm has the option to operate it all in-house where they get their employees to take a 20-minute online questionnaire. The report will immediately highlight employees who are fulfilled and unfulfilled, how important each area in the list of dot points above are to each employee, and what potential steps can be taken to improve engagement.

If you'd like to know more feel free to chat with me via LinkedIn. I'm always open to giving an online demo of the system, along with sample reports.