With so many of us working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it's more important now than ever to make sure employees feel engaged and connected. And the stakes couldn't be higher. Competition for strong employees is fierce, as many workers are searching for new jobs that better align with their changing lives and goals. Deloitte says, "employee engagement and retention... means understanding an empowered workforce’s desire for flexibility, creativity, and purpose. Under the evolving social contract between employer and employee, workers become 'volunteers' to be reengaged and re-recruited each day."
Engagement is now a CEO-level issue, and strong business leaders know it takes more than just the Human Resources department to address it. Leading companies take a proactive approach to engagement and frequently check in with employees rather than relying on the standard engagement survey once a year.
Deloitte gives these 6 tips to help you take a proactive approach to engagement. Click here for more info.
Redefine engagement: Engagement is not simply about turning an organization into a great place to work. It also means reaching down to the team and individual levels to foster highly engaged teams of employees doing work they love to do.
Create a sense of passion, purpose, and mission: Free food and ping-pong tables are fun perks, but companies that succeed in having highly engaged employees focus intently on driving meaning, purpose, and passion among workers.
Focus on all three levels: Engagement must be created, measured, and monitored at the organization, team, and individual levels.
Link compensation to engagement: Managers must embrace engaging their teams as one of their primary responsibilities. Tying team leaders’ compensation to their team members’ engagement sends a powerful signal and drives a sense of accountability about engagement efforts.
Consider “stay” interviews: Many companies conduct “exit” interviews to find out why employees are leaving. It is far better to also use “stay” interviews to learn what it would take for an employee to stay at a company.
Final check: Is your engagement effort “always on”? Perhaps the biggest challenge for HR in leading engagement programs is shifting from a transactional, once-a-year mind-set, to an “always on,” continuous listening approach to monitoring engagement.
Implement these strategies into your engagement programs and you'll see employees who are happier, more productive and more loyal than before. And that's the goal.
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