How to Benefit from Employee Engagement Trends

May 4, 2017

Employee engagement is a phrase that is often overused while being less understood in practice. For the majority of managers in America, employee engagement comes as an afterthought. This is very unfortunate as engaging employees ought to be on a regular basis while being practiced at all levels of the business hierarchy.

In essence, employee engagement involves the emotional commitment of workers towards the organization and its goals. There are numerous best practices and ideas that will foster employee engagement in your company. Discussed below are some vital engagement drivers that are likely to dominate the workplace in the course of the year.

11 Employee Engagement Trends to Boost Productivity

1. The Rise of VoE (Voice of the Employee)

Most companies acknowledge and appreciate the importance of customer engagement as well as the Voice of the Customer (VoC), which have long been the focus of every successful organization.

However, you will achieve better results if you recognize that you need to truly satisfy the requirements of your customers. And the focus on building and nurturing employee engagement and satisfaction is critical. This is achieved by engaging and listening to them.

2. Importance of Personal Skills Development

You can fill your time focusing all your energy on developing job skills among your employees. But you will also want to assist them in developing their personal leadership and effectiveness. You can achieve this by incorporating personal awareness training in your conventional training program.

It will go a long way in helping your employees with the attainment of their development goals. Meanwhile, you will be enhancing their overall engagement and satisfaction.

3. Emphasizing on Workplace Trust

Studies reveal that employees who trust their managers achieve better job satisfaction as opposed to trusting company leadership. Front-line managers will often achieve greater impact on employee engagement and satisfaction.

You will, therefore, want to invest in leadership programs at their level rather than just at the senior management rank.

4. Regular Feedback Delivery

You may be still relying on annual performance reviews. Also, you will want to shift to the ongoing preferential feedback that is being adopted by every successful organization.

This is especially true for Millennials who thrive on instant media responses and constant information flow. Waiting to receive annual performance feedback has reduced viability.

5. The Enhanced Role of Peer Recognition and Feedback

Most companies are now recognizing the importance of encouraging a meaningful connection between coworkers. This will come in handy in strengthening and improving the morale of everyone and not just the top performers.

Indeed, successful organizations are currently employing social platforms in enabling peer-to-peer recognition. This has led to significant improvement in employee engagement, coupled with notably higher customer satisfaction.

6. Appropriate Supply of Tools

This is a major influence of employee retention. Recent surveys portray employees as deriving better satisfaction from having the right technology.

In fact, a majority of the employees will resign if their technology becomes too outdated. Technology not only affects productivity since it can also significantly impact on employee retention.

7. The Blurring Marks between Work and Personal Life Balance

Work-life balance is among the major considerations for job happiness around the globe. However, the lines between working and off hours begin to blur dramatically. This is because of the increased fluidity and flexibility of the average working day.

It is, therefore, imperative that you take a proactive role in assisting your employees with finding and achieving that all-important work-life balance.

8. Building a Productive Culture

Managers who focus on their workers’ strengths and capabilities witness profound employee engagement and satisfaction. Such a culture will enable you to utilize your employees’ full capabilities for improved productivity.

Culture defines your customers’ experience. But it also impacts significantly on your employees’ satisfaction. A positive culture is something every customer can detect just by walking through the door. So can your current and prospective employees. An inspiring work culture will go a long way in fostering over performance and even inventiveness. In fact, some people contend that culture beats strategy in delivering competitive business outcomes.

9. Conforming to Millennials Rule

Millennials comprise one of the largest generation in the US labor force. A majority of employees in any company are Millennials. So every organization that desires to improve employee engagement has no choice but to form their strategies around the needs of this group of workers.

The majority of these Millennials prefer working in a creative and inclusive culture in which they exhibit high levels of satisfaction. Most importantly, Millennials are attracted to companies with strong values. They will, especially appreciate working in organizations where the work schedules are relatively flexible.

Work flexibility will often pose a challenge for the management. But it goes a long way in fostering a people-centric work environment that largely depends on personal accountability that is coupled with trust. If you decide to get on board, you are likely to be rewarded with enhanced employee engagement and satisfaction. You will also notice around you a culture fostering customer loyalty.

10. The Rise of Omni-Channel Communication

Omni-channel is a buzzword relating to e-commerce. It denotes adopting a sales approach that provides seamless customer experience for clients who opt to shop from their mobile devices, desktops, or tablets. Since Millennials comprise the largest proportion of the labor market and they do everything using their mobile devices, you will want to conform to this trend to attain optimal success.

For instance, the Millenials are constantly using Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook apps on their smartphones. It would be sensible if you created a Facebook group for communicating work related issues. You can try replacing the old email with such a group. However, be cautious when using social media lest you compromise the security and privacy of your company.

11. Employee Gamification Revolution

This does not necessarily entail integrating Candy Crush into your company internet. But Gamification involves the application of elements that are similar to those of game playing. This technique encourages employee engagement, flow and learning as competition and point scoring are vital rules of the process.