According to a recent Gallup report, organisations that implement employee engagement that is integrated into their everyday business procedures, processes, strategies and activities, outshine and outperform their competitors that don’t, by a significant margin.
In the report, they claim that executives tend to have a strategy for employee engagement in their organisation in the following four ways, almost without fail, and Gallup believes that it is these things that give such organisations their competitive edge.
Leadership
Although more organisations worldwide are beginning to recognise the central role employee engagement plays in driving profit, brand value and corporate performance, executives are still failing to provide a clear vision to their people in terms of how engagement connects to the company’s mission and growth strategy.
If leaders continue to portray employee engagement simply as another human resources initiative, or aren’t involved at all, they will not realise the business results that are possible. In any successful culture of recognition, the drive for success has to come from the top.
Successful company executives take a strategic, top-down approach to engaging leadership teams and then cascade engagement through the ranks of managers to their employees on the front lines.
Performance and Accountability
Highly engaged organisations hold their line managers accountable, not just for their team’s engagement, but also for how it relates to their team’s overall performance.
They embed engagement into managers’ balanced scorecards and use it as performance evaluation criteria. What’s more, the most engaged organisations that Gallup works with integrate engagement into their culture through the tone their leadership sets and the way employees and managers do their work.
Communication and Knowledge Management
Leaders in the best performing organisations take a strategic approach by aligning their employee engagement communication efforts. They find ways to communicate the impact of engagement continually and promote engagement tools and best practices within the business.
Within such organisations, leaders use every opportunity and available communication channel to reinforce and recognise their organisation’s commitment to employee engagement.
Ongoing Learning and Development Opportunities
The world’s top-performing organisations start engaging employees from the time they turn up on the first day. These organisations have well-defined and comprehensive leader and manager development programs, but they also go one step further and have fully integrated employee engagement into these programs.
They take leaders and managers development seriously, and focus on the development of individuals and teams. Employee engagement is a fundamental consideration in their people strategy.
Engagement is a Conscious Choice, but it needs to be executed with care and commitment
The most highly engaged organisations do not become so by accident. It takes hard work, the correct implementation and consistency to master the integration of each of these four critical components.
Such top-performing organisations are focused on outcome. They clearly define and meticulously measure success at every level within their organisation in a way that focuses every person, team, department, and business unit on driving performance and results.
Transformation is never an easy process, it takes a lot of energy and effort to initiate change, and even more to build on that momentum, however it is possible.
Gallup’s years of meticulous research illustrates that the benefits are tremendous for organisations that get it right.
Such organisations are more productive and more profitable. They are more likely to retain top talent and attract new talent because their engaged culture differentiates them from other workplaces. They get the most from their employees by tapping into their passion, potential, and discretionary efforts. And they get the most from their customers when employees maximise each customer interaction to turn customers into brand ambassadors.
These organisations consistently outperform their competitors, and they consistently grow and thrive, even in challenging economic times.
Right now, the bleak reality is that a large % of the world’s employees have essentially checked out, and others are acting out their unhappiness and undermining the accomplishments of the 13% who are committed to innovation and organisational progress.
What is your strategic plan to improve your business performance through increased staff engagement? If you don’t have one, now is a good time to consider it.
