Employee Engagement / Employee Satisfaction / Employee relationship / Communication with employees – A Basic Understanding

When discussing about HR field, considering my experience, I define HR much more than recruiting, training, personal administration and payroll. One of my favourite topics in HR is about Positive Climate.

??I remember when I had my fist tough audit in order to get the ISO TS Certification for the plant, somewhere in 2014-2015, I got a benchmark for this HR process so called Positive Climate. For those who are familiar with these types of audits, understand why this could be an important achievement or a milestone in your career. ??

?? What is Positive Climate? In my approach at that time it was an integrated process about the employees’ commitment and satisfaction, communication plan with employees (including all kind of meetings, communication tools), acknowledging the Mission / Vision / Values in the company by all employees, healthy site assessment and exit interviews.

I had a detailed procedure for this process, with the main goal to develop and implement a strategy for attaining a positive climate work in the organisation, between the employer and the employees.

?? Considering nowadays and the changes already in the work process and environment, the goal to maintain a Positive climate within the organisation it should be the main priority. Studies show that the productivity index is higher when working remote, employees are able to adapt to an individual working status, but the unity and cohesion within the teams and the relation between the employees and employer are significantly lower. 

?? So, my recommendation is to keep using the tools and all the actions as employer to maintain your positive climate into the organisations, even the work is done in online / offline. Keep the meetings with employees even in online mode, measure their engagement, take actions for improvement.

?? For smaller companies consider Positive climate as relevant and prior for your employees. There are various tools or techniques that could help to measure even if your people work remote, then your HR or management can build actions plans and perform follow up for the results, in order to be higher or better comparing with previous measure.

Below for HR people and not only, I present with much more details what is Positive Climate into an organisation.

?? Employee engagement refers to a condition where the employees are fully engrossed in their work and are emotionally attached to their organisation.

For an organisation to perform well, it is essential that the employees share a warm and a healthy relationship among themselves. They must be comfortable with each other for them to enjoy their work and deliver their level best.

?? The relationship between employees working in a common organisation is called as employee relationship. Every employee should ideally be comfortable with others to stay motivated and stress free.

?? An engaged workforce produces better business results and this engagement is achieved when people consider their organisation respects their work, their work contributes to the organisation goals and more importantly their personal aspirations of growth, rewards and pay are met.

?? Today’s millennial workforce is more informed, connected, willing to work given learning opportunities. Personal growth, opportunities to learn and explore is becoming a primary driver. Equity more than pay is a driving force. Catering to the changing needs to foster engaged employees is the need of the hour.

Understanding employee engagement drivers, measuring and enhancing engagement offers promise of better business performance by ambassadors of the organisation who work like entrepreneurs and help sustain organisation growth through innovation and lower employee turnover.

The following are a few basic steps in this process based on the best industry practices.

?? Prepare and Design

?? Employee Engagement Survey

?? Result Analysis

?? Action Planning

?? Action Follow-up

With this, communication and project management processes are the backbone of the entire employee engagement process. Communication involves plan follow-up, providing timely information and involvement of each level of organisational hierarchy.

An engaged workforce form an emotional connect with the organisation that helps them:

↗? Go the Extra Mile to Achieve Individual and Company Success

↗? Innovate at Workplace

↗? Attract customers and employees

↗? Become Ambassadors of the company, its product and processes

↗? Infuse energy and positivity at workplace.

Four things are important when we talk about employee engagement: commitment, motivation, loyalty and trust.

?? Commitment: Commitment means the degree to which individuals associate themselves with the job, the responsibilities and the organisational objectives. Engaged employees are those who are fascinated by their work and committed to face every challenge to attain their goals. They are dependable and highly productive and therefore, are accountable for what they do.

?? Motivation: Up till recently it was believed that the biggest motivation is achievement. The reverse is also true, which means achievement results in more motivation. If employees put in their 100 percent efforts to take their organisation to the next level, this attained status motivates them more than anything. Proper rewards and recognitions can further motivate them to achieve more and more for their organisation. Motivation and achievement go hand in hand and act as the burning fuels for the success of any organisation.

?? Loyalty: Employees who are actively engaged in their work show more loyalty towards the organisation. The best part is that they need less focus and attention of managers to perform their task as they themselves feel accountable for their job responsibilities and results attained. However, it doesn’t take much time for actively engaged employees to turn into disengaged employees if the organisation doesn’t have a well established reward system. Recognition is a basic necessity of individuals to remain steered up towards their job.

?? Trust: High levels of employee engagement can be fostered only when trust prevails in the organisation from both the sides. As they share strong emotional bond with the organisation, the latter should also show trust in their abilities. Employees must be given autonomy to perform their tasks their way. They should not be restricted to a specific rules and regulations and therefore, should be motivated to experiment to perform their task in a different and innovative manner.

?? All these elements play a vital role in determining the fate of an organisation. Besides this, two-way communication to discuss challenges, potential consequences, vision and values and organisation’s future should be established. Having an open conversation with employees can solve the problems that they are facing in executing their job.

What are the Dimensions of Employee Engagement?

?? What Do I Get: Employee engagement to an extent depends upon what people get in exchange for performing the job. This includes basic compensation, benefits, organisational culture and working environment. These are basic elements that motivate them to join the organisation and perform the given task with complete dedication.

?? What Do I Give: As it is a two way process, setting clear expectations plays an important role. This helps employees to understand what exactly they are expected to give the organisation. This includes defining their job responsibilities that they need to fulfil and tasks that they need to perform. The human resource team and immediate supervisors or managers need to tell them clearly what they are expected to do. It creates more meaningful relationships among seniors and subordinates and workgroups.

?? Do I Belong to the Organisation: Social association is the most basic requirement for anyone. Even employees would like to stay with the organisation that treats them as their integral part and not just the means to get the job done. ‘My opinions Count’ gives them satisfaction and motivates them to put their best to meet organisational goals.

?? How Can I Grow: Continuous growth including promotions, salary hikes and rewards and recognition are most essential tools to retain employees in the organisation. New challenges and opportunities to learn keep them motivated towards their work life and encourage them to give their best even during crisis.

?? Conducting employee engagement survey in order to find out the involvement and willingness of employees to perform their jobs and contribute to the success of their organisation is not a new idea; however, it has become more popular than ever. The reason being, nowadays, managers are keener in knowing what actually can engage or disengage employees.

?? The main aim of conducting an employee engagement survey is to find out the factors that actually drive employees to perform their best and also the ones that can put them off. It is important in order to establish sync between what top management offers and what employees expect or vice versa.

Once top management decides to conduct an employee engagement survey, the next step is to consider what type of survey and questionnaire format should be chosen in order to get maximum possible results.

How Does Employee Engagement affect Financial Performance of a Company ?

The indicators of improved financial performance are:

?? Increased Productivity

?? Lower Employee Turnover

?? Improved Customer Satisfaction

?? Employee satisfaction is a state where individuals are not only happy with their current profiles but also look forward towards a long term association with the organisation. Employees would never be satisfied with their jobs unless and until they have something interesting and challenging to work on.

?? Both management and employees have an important role to play in ensuring a positive ambience at the workplace and eventually job satisfaction.

Let us go through ways which improve employee satisfaction.

? Individuals should be assigned work as per their expertise, interest area and specialisation.

? No employee should be overburdened. Work has to be equally distributed among all.

? Promote a healthy work culture. Encourage employees to talk to each other, discuss among themselves and work as a single unit not for themselves but for the organisation.

? Give ample growth opportunities to employees.

? Nothing works better than rewarding employees suitably and releasing their salaries on time.

? Communication plays a crucial role in employee satisfaction.

? Communicate with your team members effectively. Sit with them, talk to them and find out what extra you can do for them to ensure hundred percent dedication and cooperation from their end.

? Employees are dissatisfied when information does not reach them correctly. Make them a part of important discussions where they can also share their ideas and opinions.

???Questions to reflect:

?? Do you have an employee engagement survey in your organisation?

?? If yes, how often it is applied?

?? After results analyses is there an action plan in place?

?? What about the follow up after conducting the survey?

?? Do you have a communication plan with employees in your organisation?

?? What is included into this communication plan?

?? Finally but not the least... Are the employees in your company an engaged workforce?

PS: BECOME BETTER! ??

Source of photos: my own

Source of data: managamentstudyguide.com