Who’s responsible for employee engagement at your organisation?
Who do you depend on to roll-out and implement a successful employee engagement initiative? If employee engagement is lacking, who’s to blame? If employee engagement increases, who gets credit?
The correct answer is everyone. Employee engagement is everyone’s responsibility—top-level leadership, HR, team managers, and employees. Although roles differ, every individual and team should be held accountable for the success of your organisation’s employee engagement initiative.
Below are four employee groups’ key roles and how you can hold them accountable, to ensure a successful employee engagement initiative.
Top-Level Leadership
Top-level leaders are employee engagement advocates—they are the influential campaigners and promoters of the entire initiative. Not only is it crucial that leadership buys in and supports the employee engagement initiative, they also need to set an example from the top down. (Walk the walk, as they say). Depend on leaders to set the tone for your initiative, cast a vision for the future with attainable goals, communicate changes made in an effort to improve the employee experience, and update the organisation on progress along the way.
How do you hold leaders accountable? Show them the data. When leaders buy in to their organisations employee engagement initiative, their employees are more engaged, clients are loyal, and business improves.
When leaders think engagement isn’t important, employees are less engaged.
Human Resources
HR is the happen-maker—this team makes it happen. HR is behind the scenes making sure everything runs smoothly, from selecting the right employee engagement partner and implementing tools and processes to managing the day-to-day happenings and holding the other groups accountable. Lean on HR to be the manager of your organisation’s entire employee engagement initiative. Challenge them to create a strategy that will work for your organisation.
How do you hold HR accountable? It’s very unlikely that HR, a department dedicated to every aspect of the employee experience, doesn’t understand the importance of their role in the success of your employee engagement initiative. However, on the off chance they don’t, get statistical. Research shows that when HR treats employee engagement as a year-long initiative with clear accountability, employees are more likely to be engaged (as opposed to treating it like a project for a short period of time or an agenda item at the end of a long list of priorities).
Team Managers
Team managers are your employees’ spokespeople—they’re the stepping stone between employees and leaders. Managers should analyse team engagement, identify key challenges and areas of opportunity, conduct employee focus groups to brainstorm ideas and solutions for improvement, and communicate the results to higher ups. Look to your managers to be both the sounding boards and microphones for employee concerns and suggestions.
How do you hold managers accountable? If managers don’t have the passion and drive to care about their teams’ experience, maybe they shouldn’t be managers. That being said, sometimes we all need a little push in the right direction to keep our responsibilities top of mind. This blog post will help you hold managers accountable for their teams’ engagement.
Individual Employees
Employees are your frontline voices—your only real insight into the employee experience. Rely on employees to provide the honest, candid, and actionable insight your organisation needs to improve the employee experience. Then challenge them to participate in employee focus groups to brainstorm new, creative solutions to their primary concerns.
How do you hold employees accountable? Unfortunately, employees are often an engagement initiative’s biggest skeptics. It’s not because they don’t want to improve their own experience or make work better for their colleagues. It’s often because they don’t believe leadership, HR, or managers will actually make it happen. Employees will hold themselves accountable when they truly believe their voice is heard and used to make positive change.
If you would like to know more about how to develop employee engagement in your organisation, call the team at Brownie Points today on 03 9909 7411 or email us at info@browniepoints.com.au
As experts in employee engagement we can help you make it happen.
