3 Must-Have Basics to Improve Employee Engagement

What Are Your Employee Engagement Goals?
Sometimes the ability to improve employee engagement can feel like a moving moving target and, therefore, seem unreachable.  From our experience working for nearly twenty years with clients who recognize the importance of employee engagement, we like to encourage them to think in terms of meaningful and continuous improvement.

Engaged Workers are Over 40% More Productive
100% employee engagement may not be possible, but the more you increase your employee engagement ratings, the better your future business outlook. Our studies show that engaged workers are over 40% more productive and more effective than their disengaged or hostile counterparts. That should be well worth your efforts to increase employee engagement – it can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

3 Must-Have Basics to Improve Employee Engagement
So the question becomes, how can you go about increasing your employees’ loyalty to the company and intention to stay, their commitment to high performance, and their willingness to exert discretionary effort?

1. 1.  The Role of Trust
   What we know from two decades of employee engagement training for sure is that trust plays a significant role in improving employee engagement levels.  Workers who “love the people” they work with value the relationships they have built on their team. And this “love” spills over to a loyalty to their company.

   But the kind of trust that is fundamental to improve employee engagement goes beyond trusting team members. Employees also need to trust their senior leaders.

   — Do they believe the company leadership to be competent and ethical?
   — Does the modeled culture by leaders promote the kind of trust needed for open communication?
   — Do they believe that senior leaders are setting the right course?

   Employees want to see that their ideas are welcomed and valued and that even their criticisms are thoughtfully received and acted upon.

   This requires that leaders themselves acknowledge mistakes and honestly share business plans and financial results so there are no unwelcome surprises. When you hide bad news, you undermine employee faith and confidence in the organization.

2. The Role of Sharing
   Beyond sharing ongoing information about the business, leaders, to improve employee engagement, should share rewards when times are good and targets are met. This helps employees see a direct connection between their performance and business results. And that direct connection increases their feeling of responsibility to their own success and the success of the company.

   By the same token, when times are bad, all should share in the pain – executives as well as employees. The incredibly and disproportionately high salaries of some executives can weaken the trust and loyalty of employees very quickly.

3. The Role of Training and Development
   Certainly opportunities for learning and development and the power to co-create one’s own career path do a great deal to improve employee engagement. But don’t overlook opportunities for employees to grow their skills and expertise across different functions.

   The more experience they have working with others, the more they are likely to build their soft skills – and those are the skills that will help them advance in any arena.

The Bottom Line
If you are serious about increasing employee engagement, be sure you focus on the basics first. See that it is built on a strong foundation of trust, open sharing of information, and multiple development paths. Your employees will pay you back generously with their loyalty, their hard work, and their enthusiasm for the company.

To learn more about taking employee engagement to the next level, download Are You Aimlessly Engaging Employees Your Employees?