Sustainable Employee Engagement

Employee engagement has now come on the?radar of almost every?company, multinational (MNC) or Indian, and this has emerged as a critical driver of business success in today's competitive marketplace. This is very well-established fact that high levels of engagement promote retention of talent, improves productivity, foster customer loyalty and improve organizational performance, and most importantly stakeholder value.

Engaged employees always stand apart, they’re more likely to go the extra mile, bringing passion to every task that they undertake. In 2016, after reviewing their own company’s performance data, Google confirmed that frequent conversations between a leader and his or her team members was a leading indicator of a team’s high performance, and hence highly engaged team(s).

It's no secret that how to keep employee engaged, my experience says that, if you are there with your team, particularly when they need you, the team feel completely aligned with you, with the business, and the company. Regular one-on-one check-ins, skip-level meetings between employees and their manager, and the leadership team elevates the culture of engagement.

It’s no secret that fun at work, or enjoyable workplaces tend to be more engaging for employees. Obviously, you can’t have fun all the time, particularly when you are working in chemical industry—or else no “real” work would get done. But one should make an effort to make the workday more entertaining for most of your employees. Consider adding recreational activities to your break room or setting daily challenges to keep employees active and interested. Most importantly love your employees, they will love you!

It’s impossible to be engaged at work if the work that employee doing is not engaging, recently in a Deloitte’s survey, 42% of respondents seeking new employment believed their current job did not make good use of their skills and abilities. This is also very important that managers, heads and executives lead by example. If employees feel like the company policies, short and long-term benefits only apply to a select few — or only apply when it’s convenient for leadership — they’ll begin to distrust management. Distrust is very critical factor, this makes slippery slope that can lead to a negative work culture, noxious bosses, and toxic office environment and culture can disengage employees further.

The another very important factor, every employee always feels that their bosses are knowledgeable, superior in skills and experience, and consider them as their role models. And in difficult times, most of the employees looks at their managers as their first line-of-defense. But when they (employee) see their manager as a person who doesn’t have right skill and experience, when the manager consider employee as competitor, and starts showing bossism, distrusting, abusing, and torturing them (the employee), when "the boss" (manager) gets engaged in politicking and backstabbing then situation becomes more worst. Studies show that people (employees) leave managers not companies, and the ultimate sufferer is the employee, and the organization. But if top leadership team, apply check and balance to the bad bosses/managers, this will surely help to improve "employee engagement" reaches to its peak.

Fostering the bonding between employees and managers, and the leadership team always shows higher signs of engagement. Managers shouldn’t always force employees, and their direct reports to get along with their thoughts, with their style (+ or -), their way of working, their way of thinking, but they (managers) can improve the bonding and teamwork potential with some simple, and practical practices- teambuilding events, organizing skill enhancement trainings and learning sessions, organizing fun driven distressing sessions. If employees get into a conflict, listen to their views as well, and practice healthy conflict resolution to resolve those disputes. When an employee notice that his or her voice is getting heard, he or she feels more connected and engaged.

Improve trust in leadership, relationships with leaders play a magical role in determining an employee’s sense of engagement. With strong, trustworthy leaders in place, employees feel more pride in their work—and feel more engaged with the organization. Improve trust in leadership by fostering mutual transparency and open communication, as a leader you must listen to employee feedbacks and make improvements and changes when necessary. Their is very interesting report published by Dale Carnegie in 2017, according to this study, "Just 26% of leaders surveyed say that employee engagement is a very important part of what they think about, plan, and do every day. Another 42% say they work on it frequently, and the rest only occasionally, rarely or never.

Skip level meetings have also becomes fossilized now, somehow we need to revitalized this, in fact this must be made mandatory, at least in MNCs. Many times, people feels that 360-degree?feedback is just a tool to evaluate employee's performance, yes this is, but if you are courageous leader, you can use 360 feedbacks as a tool to know views of your direct reports, teams and determine the pulse of employees. I personally feel that, if every organization make it mandatory that all their leaders must take 360 feedbacks on 2-1-2 skip level basis (2 level up, same level and 2 level down), and if this is done on half yearly basis, then this will help organization a lot! Merck Group 默克雪兰诺 Dietmar Eidens

Also, if companies work on reducing the average age of their "leadership bundle", this will create opportunities for middle management and allow the "fresh blood flow (circulation)” to the top, ultimately this will benefit the business. I'm not suggesting organizations to get rid of all experienced and senior professional, but yes there must be the balance.

Many organizations, and leaders allows, and promote young talent, but this appears as a formality when "favoritism and my replica" dominates their decision. Leaders, who are in the top positions in organizations must remember that "someone" has given the way to them, so it is very important for them to “provide passage” to the people who are standing at the lower ladder in their organization. Trustworthy, transparent, and transformative leaders who believes that people (employees) in the organizations are the backbone of the organizational existence and its performance, who believes that organization success is dependent on them (employees), are the true leader, the people leader. If you have such kind of leadership in your organization, you don't need to think much about this puzzle word- employee engagement, your employees will take care of it!

If you are investing if MFs (mutual funds), you may know that starting SIP?is independent of existing market conditions, anytime is a?good time?to invest, and this so true with starting Employee Engagement initiatives in your organization, anytime is good time to go-ahead and implement sustainable employee engagement activities in your work area, in your company!?

Happy Employee Engagement !!