7 Award Winning Employee Engagement Strategies

Award Winning Employee Engagement Strategies
Each year, we honor clients nationwide for success in collecting, analyzing, and acting on employee engagement feedback.  We know from organizational culture assessment data that our most successful clients have award winning employee engagement strategies in two categories:

• Raising Engagement for those organizations with the highest increase in employee engagement from the previous year.
• Highest Level of Engagement for those with the highest overall composite engagement score.

We honor these award winning employee engagement strategies because when employers value their people, genuinely listen to their feedback, and work hard to make positive change, they deserve to be recognized.

What Do These Award Winning Employee Engagement Strategies Do Better than Their Peers?
How do these organizations use employee feedback to better their workplace and win awards for their outstanding levels of employee engagement?

Luck, chance, and circumstance have nothing to do with it.  Their success is due to getting the right data, committing to do the hard work, and employee engagement training strategies that make an impact

Two Recommendations for Collecting Employee Feedback
If you want to see the same outstanding employee engagement results in your organization, follow the advice from award winning employee engagement strategies from our winners:

1. Collect Employee Feedback Annually
   Data becomes stale and employees have new feedback to give. Set up an annual survey process and stick to it. It builds employees’ trust and confidence in the initiative.
2. Ask for Feedback About Your Survey Initiative
   In your 2^nd, 3^rd, etc. surveys, ask these for questions to monitor and improve the effectiveness of your employee engagement initiatives:

   (1) Is senior leadership committed to responding to the results of this survey?
   (2) Did your manager share the results of the last survey with your team?
   (3) Did your team develop action plans to address issues raised by the last survey’s results?
   (4) Have you noticed positive change as a result of the last survey?

Three Best Practices for Sharing Survey Results with Your Organization   

1. Utilize Communication Tools
   Use the communication tool that works best for each team, whether in-person meetings on the manufacturing floor or webinars and emails for remote employees.  How you communicate is as important as what you communicate.
2. Focus On the Critical Few
   Prioritize in-person communication over written announcements for sharing results when possible — from managers to senior leaders.  You want to make the results and actions personal and relevant.
3. Use a Tiered Approach to Sharing Results
   For example:
   — Have the CEO share high-level summary of results during an all-company briefing.
   — Host town halls on the topic of employee engagement.
   — Encourage discussions about engagement strengths and areas of opportunity.
   —  Have employees volunteer to lead “action committees” focused on a few key areas of opportunity.
   — Include representatives from across the entire business.
   — Work directly with senior leaders to provide them with the information needed to cascade results and action plans that are specific to their area of the business.

Two Ways to Hold Leaders Accountable for Sustaining an Engaged Workforce

1. Empower Management and Create Accountability
   Empower managers to drive the engagement survey initiative and take ownership in creating ideas to address issues within their teams.  Add employee engagement improvement as a key success metric for all people managers.  Hold everyone accountable for following through.
2. Set Expectations
   Share in-depth results on leadership effectiveness with each manager and their director to set clear targets for improvement. Set expectations for directors to coach their managers on where and how to improve employee engagement and retention.

The Bottom Line
Employee engagement isn’t just a survey; it is an ongoing commitment and should be woven into the day-to-day roles of each team member. And lastly, transparency, active employee involvement, and consistent follow-through actions on employee engagement commitments are all critical to successfully improving engagement and retention.

To learn more about award winning employee engagement strategies, download The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Employee Engagement.