Keeping Employees Engaged
Today’s labour market offers several career opportunities to employees who might not essentially be looking to change jobs, however, they might be curious enough to evaluate them, resulting in them realizing that there is a better prospect for them out there.
We have heard so many times that, ‘It’s an employees’ market’ and, for many of the positions, this is a reality as there are a number of positions out there for candidates to choose from. So, as a company, we might need to ask ourselves, why should our employees decide to stay with us? What is our company offering our employees for them to decide not to move to another company?
The workforce is everchanging and companies need to keep abreast with innovative ways on how to keep their employees engaged. Sometimes, even the simplest of practices can lead to positive employee engagement. We encourage communication between teammates, but we forget about communication between the company and the employees. There could be a number of processes or changes happening within the company which employees might not be aware of – having a communication path which allows the company to give information to their employees about certain changes or processes may result in employees feeling a better sense of belonging to the company.
There are several ways how we can empower and motivate our employees – this can be through training and development, allowing them an opportunity to share their opinion, involving them in decision making processes, having a good compensation structure, encouraging them to be creative and suggesting new ways of doing things, the possibility of job rotations and so much more.
Moreover, there are also ways of how companies can measure employee engagement – this can be done through a means of a survey which includes questions on different aspects of their employment including motivation, relationship with management and colleagues, company values, work-life balance and more. To ensure a successful exercise, many companies decide to engage a third-party to conduct this survey. By doing so, employees trust that their contribution will remain anonymous, thus resulting in them being more honest in their responses.
If done right, employee engagement can lead to improving retention, lowering workplace stress which might lead to burnout, providing a better service to our clients and customers and achieving company objectives.
These small steps towards employee engagement can be the result of why employees decide to remain with your company instead of moving on to the next. By looking at what keep our employees engaged, we are able to start moving towards having a positive workforce, resulting in our employees being our employer brand.
Nadine Cilia – Senior Executive
