Having an engaged workforce not only creates a highly motivating environment but also helps you reach your goals easily too. A worker that is engaged with the organization can bring in more business than the average one, but this effect compounds when the whole workforce is engaged.
A great way of doing this is by incentivizing your employees. You can have performance bonuses and rewards for exemplary work. We at Ovation Incentives firmly believe that a happy workforce means a productive workplace.
This article will go over the ways employee engagement can increase your workforces performance and the best ways you can measure that engagement.
How do you measure employee engagement?
There are several ways you can measure employee engagement and here are a few of the most effective ones
Have a clear goal
Whether it be your company’s vision or your goals for measuring employee engagement you should establish them early on. Having a few benchmarks to start from helps you fine-tune your results even more later on. Here are a few questions that you should ask them
- Do they feel valued?
- Are their opinions valued at work?
- Can they see career growth or development at your company?
- Do they take time off frequently?
An email is still the most effective and popular way of communicating internally. You can get feedback or just ask them how they are without any issues. It will give you insights into how your team is doing and how high their optimism is.
Surveys
A survey from time to time can help you understand what the morale of your team is and how they are doing. Checking up frequently can help you alter your expectations and make a more inclusive team.
We recommend asking them questions like whether they are satisfied with the workplace conditions or do they like the leadership style in the organization. You can incorporate a survey into your weekly newsletter and they can be answered by your employees as and when they feel comfortable.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
It is based on the difference between your least engaged employee and your most engaged one. Simply put it tells you how likely your employees will boast about the company’s culture to other people. Word of mouth will help you get noticed and you never know how far it can take your reputation. You can add the anonymous option so you can get better data too.
One-on-one Meetings
Having one-on-one meetings with your employees helps you to know them better. You can be up to date on their lives and what is happening with them outside the workspace. We recommend scheduling these on a regular basis so that you can gauge what the perception in the workforce is.
You can ask them questions about what they like or dislike about the office, or is there something you can do to enhance their experience?
Importance of measuring employee engagement
Employee engagement will lead to your company being more successful on both a short term and long term basis. Happy employees means a healthy company that will have higher productivity, greater staff retention and meet more of their business goals. This is why you should measure employee engagement.
Employee engagement is important for the following reasons:
You will know why people are leaving
No one wants a high employee turnover and if you figure out why people are leaving, you can make changes to make them stay.
Find productivity issues
An engaged workforce will tell you about your productivity issues and how you can make them even more productive. This can be a technical or non-technical issue. Having productive employees will make your company much more efficient and sustainable.
How to increase engagement
You can find areas to improve your engagement and have people feel safe and secure at the job. This is because an engaged workforce will come to you and give you suggestions without the fear of being reprimanded.
Benefits of an engaged workforce
People show up to work
If the workforce is engaged then they are more than likely to show up and do the work. Having a work culture that motivates people to show up increases your productivity in any case.
Healthier employees
A proactive employer that asks about how the employees are doing, will have much healthier employees too. They will be willing to tell you what is going wrong and why they haven’t been performing. Open communication will get you to the root of the problems and also
Lower turnover
Nobody wants to work at a place where people are leaving every 6 months or so. This is because it often shows a lack of leadership skills of the management and also a bad work environment. This ultimately leads to lower productivity.
But if your workplace is positive and motivating, you’ll have people ready to stick around for longer periods of time. They will go out of their way to help the company and get the work done no matter what.
Customer satisfaction increases
As employees feel better about their own jobs, customer satisfaction shoots up too. This will lead to you making it your set goals too. It is a multifaceted problem, that when done right leads to increased customer satisfaction too.
Network and community
If the employees that leave your company are praising you for your work culture then more people will be interested in joining you. A hip culture creates a buzz amongst the people for your company and more and more people would like to be a part of it.
Innovation
A place where the employees feel heard and valued means that more and more people will come up with new ideas. Some of these ideas can make a massive change for your business and also lead to more efficient practices. Hearing everyone out will help you have a think-tank in the company that can come up with innovative solutions for your problems.
Effective leadership
Since you are becoming more efficient than ever you will be able to have effective leadership practice in place. Your role as a leader will become more streamlined and you will be able to take tough decisions better than ever.
Employees leaving the company will also have positive things to say about the company’s leadership. This creates a great perception of the company’s leadership outside.
How to Improve employee engagement
Providing the required tools
Many times especially in technical fields, what is provided by the company and what the employees need are not in sync. This can create friction between the two groups and affect output.
Individual attention
As mentioned before, one-on-one sessions are a great way to ensure that all the people are on the same page. It gives your team an intra-personal edge to work with.
Training
Oftentimes new hires struggle to get a grasp of the company and its intricate processes. To make the transition smoother we recommend providing the initial training needed to become a productive employee as soon as possible.
Recognize the hard work
If you see someone putting in the extra effort then you should congratulate them and ask them to keep up the good work. Praise can go a long way in a work environment.
Employee rewards and recognition programs
A reward program can be implemented in the company and the top performers can be rewarded accordingly for their efforts. This is one of the many ways to motivate your employees to do better. It is a fair and unbiased system that can bring out the best in everyone.
It is also good practice on behalf of the company to show that you care about the employees, we highly recommend it.
In conclusion
If you have an engaged workforce not only will you have better profits but your organization will be more humane too. Even when they leave they will sing praises about your company to the people they meet and you will have an eager bunch just waiting for an interview.
This will create a positive buzz around your company, all thanks to your engaged workforce.
Book a demo with Ovation Incentives and avail our great offers on employee engagement programs and rewards. We also have customized solutions so send us your request and we will send you a quote.