What is employee engagement?

Engagement. The latest buzzword in HR and one that has created great confusion and uncertainty in the workplace.

Employee engagement is the term used to explain how committed your employees are to your company; it’s the emotional commitment that the employees have to the business and its goals and how driven they are to come to work and contribute to your cause.

For many employers, engagement is swept under the carpet, ignored or seen as unimportant to the company’s overall success.

However, this couldn’t be more wrong!

As an employer, you need to ask yourself:

• Are your employees engaged?
• If you don’t know, how can you find out if they are?
• What can you do if your employees are disengaged?

Engaged employees are desirable to your business as, the more engaged your employees are, the greater the productivity, the better the workplace culture and the greater the profits!

Being engaged means that your people are committed to the work they are doing, that they know it has a purpose, that it will help the company as a whole and that the work they do is valued.

The commitment they show isn’t only dependant on the salary and benefits package attached to their job, it is also based on their emotional investment to the success of the organisation.

The signs that an employee is engaged include:

• Taking pride in their work, paying attention to detail;
• Going that extra mile without being asked;
• Sharing what they know, what they want to achieve and how this will help your organisation;
• Genuinely caring about the organisation achieving its goals.

The investment they make is voluntary and if they are engaged in their place of work, they are more likely to stay loyal to you and your business.

Other benefits of employee engagement include:

• Increased productivity and improved business results;
• Greater customer satisfaction; happy employees lead to happy customers;
• Increased retention in dedicated and knowledgeable staff;
• Better working culture; happy and driven employees;
• Greater innovation; new solutions, products and services.

So hopefully you can see that promoting employee engagement is worthwhile to your employees and your business.

If you haven’t measured your employee engagement recently, or at all, you’re in luck, as with our new Engagement Multiplier tool we are able to provide you with an engagement assessment that delivers quantifiable scores and honest feedback so that you can identify areas of development and action to make sure your employees are fully engaged. And best of all, your initial benchmarking survey is FREE: click here to get yours now!

Millie.

Guardian’s Business Development Intern