4 Strategies to Move Past Annual Employee Engagement

Does Employee Engagement Matter?
From our annual employee engagement surveys with nearly 5,000 organizations, we know that engaged workforces outperform their unengaged counterparts.  Indeed, employee engagement should very much matter to both business and people leaders who want their business to succeed.

Moving the Engagement Needle
Companies that get the most from employee engagement initiatives have made it an organizational discipline and a strategic priority day-in and day-out.  Not just once a year.  They view employee engagement as an ongoing initiative that is regularly discussed, evaluated, and incorporated as a systemic part of how work gets done.

If you want higher levels of discretionary effort, advocacy, and employee loyalty, you need to make employee engagement part of your ongoing management and leadership scorecard.

4 Strategies to Move Past Annual Employee Engagement
To continually improve the value of your annual employee engagement efforts throughout the year, here are four strategies to put into regular practice:

1. Link Employee Engagement to Business Results
   Share with your workforce the data behind how employee engagement directly affects business outcomes. The context is critical for all employees to understand why engagement is important.  Such an understanding will increase their motivation to get involved in the effort.
2. Don’t Hide Your Successes
   Your engagement survey will reveal important areas of strength. Highlight these not only to help attract new talent, but also to increase every employees’ level of commitment to making your organization a great place to work.  The motivation to keep at it is critical.
3. Don’t Hide Your Challenges
   Your engagement survey should also point toward areas where you need more work. Show your employees that you are committed to fixing what’s broken.  Employees will appreciate that their voice has been heard and that you are taking concrete steps to improve the situation.
4. Share Feedback and Successes
   Engagement survey results should be shared with the workforce, so employees know that their comments – both pro and con – have been seriously reviewed and evaluated. As success stories accrue, share them.  Not only is it positive reinforcement of your intent as leaders to improve, but it also suggests ways other teams can:

• provide innovative learning opportunities
• offer meaningful recognition for desired behaviors
• underline the importance of one-on-one meetings with managers
• address issues that lie outside their typical job routines

The Bottom Line
A quality employee engagement survey should provide all the information you need to move the employee engagement needle.  Just understand that it will take the full commitment of leadership to make it happen and that commitment will be part of their measure throughout the year.

To learn more about taking annual employee engagement to the next level, download the Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement