Employee engagement typically describes the level of happiness employees feel at work, and how dedicated they are to their role and duties. It is also related to the way they feel towards their colleagues, the work environment and company culture. It is of key importance for HR professionals to keep a high level of engagement, since this will have a direct impact on the employees’ mental wellbeing, improves work culture, reduces turnover, and builds better work and customer relationships. This in turn will result in improved productivity and performance.
Most employees spend the majority of their day at work around their colleagues, so it is important that these employees experience an overall job satisfaction and have a positive working experience. Employee engagement should happen at all levels of a company and this is possible when managers identify their employees’ needs.
It is vital that places of work have an employee engagement strategy in place since this helps in creating a positive working environment whilst ensuring that workers always better themselves as employees, which will at the end be also beneficial for the company. It also improves employee loyalty to the company and the brand, resulting in better customer service to the company’s clients. It is important that companies have clear performance indicators which identify what the key targets the company intends to improve on, and these are made accessible to all employees. This transparent mode of communication encourages open dialogue amongst everyone ensuring that everyone is on the same wavelength at all times.
At misco, we believe in having an open-door policy where anyone can speak about their concerns or needs. Managers also believe in having regular one-to-one meetings with the employees in their department, and here one can go through any difficulties they may be having. The employee can ask for any feedback and together, they can discuss different ways in which a solution can be found. For every accomplishment achieved, every employee receives instant recognition for all the hard work that was put into a project.
misco also encourages collaborative projects between different units. Through this collaboration, teams work together towards the same goal. In this way, employees are given the opportunity to work with other individuals from outside one’s team, therefore providing an opportunity to be exposed to and to learn different skills.
Another important element to enhance employee engagement is organising team building activities. At misco, the ‘Fun Committee’, made up of a team of three employees, organise different activities held both at the work premises and outside. Such activities aim at encouraging employees to get to know each other socially by spending time together whilst enjoying each other’s company in a non-work environment. Knowing that there is something fun and exciting to look forward to, also increases the employees’ motivation and morale at work.
As explained before, at misco, several internal and external activities are organised along the year. For example, every last Friday of the month we have a Casual Day where employees are allowed to come in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers, which is different to the everyday corporate look. Even though this is something small, it puts employees’ morale up as they will work in a more motivated manner.
Every month, we have lunch as a team by spending our break all together. This is usually combined with international celebrations dedicated to particular food items such as Pizza, Ftira and Chinese Days. The ‘Fun Committee’ also likes to surprise employees with small gestures to celebrate these type of days. For example, for Donut Day, each employee was given donuts and for Valentine’s Day, homemade red velvet cookies.
On particular special occasions, employees are allowed to leave the office a bit earlier to spend time together outside of the work environment. Recently, the Fun Committee organised a scavenger hunt around Mdina. The next event coming up entails the employees enjoying some organised games by the beach.
These are small gestures that have a large impact on employee engagement since they make a huge difference to the employee’s motivation and dedication at work on a day-to-day basis.
Sara Anne Galea – HR Executive