According to a study released last week, employee engagement has reached levels that it has not experienced since 2009. 68% of employees are now engaged based on the survey of 400,000 employees at nearly 5,000 various organizations. The average increase over the last 3 years has been about .43%. If this rate continues, employee engagement could be back to 2007 levels, which was 70.6%. Throughout the past 7 years the same top three items have had the greatest impact on employee engagement:
- Committed Leadership – those leaders who show they are committed in making their organization a great place to work.
- Trust – Employees trust the leadership and feel that their leaders are setting their organization on the right course. Trust helps solidarity in achieving common organizational goals.
- Future Success – Employees truly feel their organization will be successful in the future. Employees are confident in their future with an organization and gain a sense of security and trust.
Now let's discuss in more detail... Committed leadership helps employees build confidence in their leaders and in turn, their organization. Leaders should maintain regular communication with their employees, follow through on plans and promises, listen to employee feedback, demonstrate their commitment to the success of their organization, and cultivate a work environment that employees genuinely enjoy. Valuing employees leads to trust. Prepare employees with the tools they need for success and the power to accomplish their jobs effectively, incorporate a recognition program to ensure that all employees are being recognized properly as well as giving the employees the power to recognize one another, and foster employee growth and development by providing promotional opportunities when available.
When it comes to the future, regularly communicate your organizations plans, include employees on any goal setting processes, make sure to follow through and communicate when goals are achieved, share market and industry trends, and also share any competitor insight with employees. In addition, over the last three years, companies with more engaged employees also had improved employee retention rates. Employees at companies where retention improved responded more favorably than those at companies where retention either stayed the same or decreased. This supports the ongoing fact that there is a direct correlation between employee engagement and employee retention. Also, profits have been higher in companies with higher employee engagement and employee retention. As engagement increases, businesses become more successful, more employees become engaged, profits increase, engagement becomes even more successful, etc…the process is amazingly cyclical!
You can download the Quantum Workplace 2014 Employee Engagement Trends report
here and read all the great details!
