5 Gifts of Employee Engagement
Are you providing adequate employee engagement?
Every year, thousands of HR Practitioners around the world would love to drop packages of excellent engagement on their employees’ desks. In a year of record-high revelations of sexual harassment claims, as well as calling out bullies and corruption, HR has been busier than ever.
Check out these five quick ways to show you care about your employees. Their needs are really pretty simple and realistic. No surprises here, but maybe HR will start to listen.
5 Gifts of Employee Engagement
- 2-way Communication – Are you listening and responding to what your employees are saying? It’s easy to ignore complaints and skip the opportunity to let employees know that you heard them, but is it prudent? Consider the reasons why people leave great organizations: usually they don’t. Are you asking the obvious question: why do you stay? Start talking to your quality employees, not just those who create a challenge for HR and your department supervisors.
- Track ALL Employee Interactions with HR – Are you documenting and tracking what you should be documenting and tracking in order to provide the best service to your employees? Does executive management know the challenges that are proven by HR metrics? Do yourself a favor and back up employee needs with metrics and analytics that tell the whole story.
- Provide a Path for Career Growth and Development – Do your employees know that you care enough about them to make sure their knowledge and expertise are kept up-to-date by providing opportunities for career development? Does continuing education matter to your employees? How do you know — have you asked? [see #1]
- Compensation and Benefits – Are you competitive with those who might recruit your best talent away when it comes to comp & benefits? It’s easy to bury your head in the sand by saying your company is so great and provides such a great service or product that you only need to provide just that. Not true, today’s workforce has many choices and if you are not competitive or do not let them know they are valued or provide succession planning and competitive compensation or research the best benefits possible for your employees, your competition will and you will begin to lose the quality employees your worked so hard to hire and train.
- Social Engagement and Social Responsibility – Have you taken the time to figure out what your employees care about? Are you providing opportunities for relationship development among employees outside of a high-stress work environment? Caring about your local community, or a cause dear to some employees, or even changing to a more biodegradable paper cup can make a huge difference in employee engagement. Sometimes, it is the small things that matter.
Do you worry about retaining the quality employees you worked so hard to acquire?
You should. It’s a very tight hiring market, and your quality employees have choices. Can they go anywhere else and get what they need and want – better than what you are currently offering?
Make it easier for them to stay by giving them many reasons to stay. You have the power to engage with employees. Use it!
**Check out the Dovetail Employee Portal to learn how to communicate quickly with employees and learn what’s important to them.
