Your business’ bottom line isn’t the only indicator of success. While it’s certainly important, if that is the only metric you’re using to quantify success, you’re likely not seeing the whole picture. To get a more accurate gauge of the success, health, and strength of your organization you must examine employee engagement.
According to Gallup, employee engagement nationwide is sitting around 32%. That means it’s quite likely that only 1/3 of your employees are engaged. And here’s the kicker – disengaged employees cost their employer, on average, 34% of their salary (source). This equates to roughly $450-550 billion (yes, with a “b”!) across the United States annually.
In other words, without employee engagement, you’re at a huge financial disadvantage. An unengaged employee is less productive during their workday, more likely to no show for work, and far more likely to leave your organization. Not only that, but disengagement is contagious. One disengaged employee can easily turn into two, and the next thing you know you have teams and departments that are unsatisfied, underperforming, and unmotivated. Talk about expensive. For the sake of your organization and your people, you have to make employee engagement a priority.
So What is Employee Engagement?
Simply put, employee engagement is the level of commitment an individual feels toward their employer. The more engaged an employee is, the more enthusiastic they are about their role, their responsibilities, and the overall outcome of the company as a whole.
When you implement tried and true strategies, you can increase engagement in your employees. And when they’re engaged, good things happen. Let’s take a closer look.
What Happens When Employees Are Engaged?
The statistics on employee engagement are pretty clear. It is arguably one of the most important things to consider in the management and leadership of your organization as data shows that employee engagement equals organization success. Here are a few things that increase when employees are actively engaged.
- Morale. When an employee is engaged, their overall sense of morale rises, which (depending on the individual) can have an infectious quality and raise the morale of others.
- Productivity. When an employee feels like their contributions matter, they put more effort into their work and turn out more or even better-quality work.
- Self-worth. If an employee sees the work they’re doing as having value and being appreciated, their feelings of self-worth rise. They get chemical reinforcement in the form of dopamine from their brains! In fact, compliments or effective recognition in the workplace have proven to be as effective as cash in terms of employee engagement.
- Connectedness and retention. A big part of feeling engaged means that the employee feels connected to their job and/or their employer. This means they’re more likely to stay with that employer. Employee retention can be a huge cost savings for companies and can bolster confidence in other employees and even customers.
- Loyalty. When your team is engaged, they feel loyal to the company – but it goes further than that. The loyalty that employees feel translates to consumers, customers, and your overall perception as a company and brand is solidified.
- Profits. As a direct result of having a more loyal fan base and more productive and innovative workforce, your company’s profits will rise.
It’s pretty clear that companies that have employees who are committed and aligned to the organization’s mission, vision, and values drive the business forward. The higher the engagement, the better employee retention and performance. When your people are performing to the best of their ability, they’re wowing your customers, driving up customer loyalty. This organizational success creates an environment where innovative, out-of-the-box thinking is far more encouraged and supported by leadership, bringing engagement and performance up even more. It’s a full cycle.
How to Drive Employee Engagement
We know that employee engagement can solidify an organization’s success and disengaged employees can tank a company. So how do you boost engagement?
First, you have to establish a baseline of how engaged your employees actually are. You won’t know how to solve the problem, or even if there is a problem, without gathering data on engagement. This is one of the reasons why we developed our Etho software – because it allows us to easily quantify the engagement of every department, team, and individual in our organization.
Once you have the numbers, you have to do something with them. That’s where management and leadership come in. Truly effective managers operate more like coaches. They know the ins and outs of every individual on their team – their strengths, weaknesses, motivators, and behavioral tendencies. Not only do they know this about their people, but they use it to customize their coaching to them. Going from a one-size-fits-all management approach to coaching your employees as unique individuals will automatically increase engagement as your employees will feel known and understood.
From there, you can implement some of the pillars of our Etho platform; empowering employees to own their growth and development, consistent one-on-one communication between managers and employees, and celebrating the wins of your people.
Creating an engaging environment begins with a management platform and approach that’s designed to foster performance. When you’re managing for performance, you cultivate an environment of engagement and success. Learn more about how our software can revolutionize engagement (and thereby, performance) in your organization by scheduling a demo today!
