The House Of Employee Engagement

The level of employee engagement is very crucial to ensure sustainable business success, irrespective of size of the organization; be it a startup, midsize company, or large global organization. While the need for high employee engagement is clear, achieving it is not that simple. Suggested framework below, based on ‘House of Employee Engagement’ is a collection of principles, which when applied together, can ensure tangible results for employee engagement, irrespective of the type of the business, industry, and size of the organization. Like a house, where all elements like roof, walls, structural design etc. need to come together to make a strong house, the same applies to below mentioned principles to work together and achieve a strong, long lasting employee engagement.

1.?????? Big Picture: Employees needs to understand the big picture and the overall vision of the organization. Many organizations fail to address this. As a result, employees get busy in their daily work without connecting it to the company’s vision.

2.?????? Strategy: Vision should translate to Strategy. Strategy must be built around framework of: why, what, and how, to make it easy to understand and relate very well. The ‘Why’ part covers the current challenges an organization is facing, competitors’ strengths and opportunities for the organization. The ‘What’ part provides details on key business goals, key focus areas, products, and services. The “How” explains the operating model, key projects, and initiatives an organization should run to achieve its goals. By listing these concrete projects and initiatives, an organization can make sure that its employees can strongly link their own work to the strategy. This leads to my next point, the importance of ‘connect’.

3.?????? Connect: I believe this is the most important aspect of employee engagement. Unfortunately, not all organizations connect the work done by each individual employee with the organizational strategy. Research shows that employees who work hard and achieve good results, feel less motivated and engaged, if there is no connection between their work and the organizational strategy and goals. There should be a mapping of tasks done by a team (and employees) to the business goals, priorities, and strategy of the organization. A good connection allows the employee to take ownership and bring forward new ideas. Besides engagement, the sense of ownership nurtures a culture of innovation.

4.?????? Communicating The Progress: Discussing the organization’s progress towards achieving its strategic goals should be part of ongoing conversations and throughout the year. This communication needs to happen at all levels. These conversations help to identify any gaps between strategy and execution across the organization.? New employees joining the team should be made aware of the strategy, goals, and objectives and how they can contribute and voice their ideas, from day one.

5.?????? Rewards & Recognition: A fair and transparent reward and recognition process that connects individual and team outcomes with business goals, is the foundation for incentivizing employee engagement. Rewards and recognition should be tied to the teams’ key performance indicators. Employees should be recognized throughout the year, not just once a year. ?Best is to establish monthly, quarterly, and yearly awards ensuring small recognitions every month followed by quarterly awards and finally a grand annual prize. A common pitfall is that the reward and recognition process is not strongly linked with the big picture and business goals. The other potential pitfall is that while there is a linkage to business goals, the award decisions are not objective and instead, subjective to manager judgement. This can cause frustration and diminish employee engagement.

6.?????? Upskilling/ Learning Plans: Employee engagement depend strongly on how an organizing ensuring learning and upskilling of its employees. Every organization should have a structured upskilling program in place to encourage colleagues to take up new skills via trainings and certifications. Make it easy and simple and allow them to learn at their own pace. Partner with leading online learning platforms for high quality learning experience that accommodate a busy schedule. Link the upskilling strongly with organization strategy and goals. Encourage and reward upskilling. Studies have shown that employees who are empowered to upskill are highly engaged and they give this investment back to the organization by delivering process improvements, innovations and higher customer satisfaction.

The execution of these principles needs to be continuous to achieve a high employee engagement.? Achieving and sustaining a high employee engagement takes time and leadership commitment. It cannot be accomplished with a single event or initiative. A last bit of advice -do not confuse employee engagement with employee happiness. ?

A happy employee may not be fully engaged however a fully engaged employee is always happy.