What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is not necessarily a measure of employee happiness but instead a property used to assess how many companies are emotionally committed to the company that they work for.
Now that you know that engagement is not a term in business that is used interchangeably with happiness or employee satisfaction, you might know how exactly you can measure how many engaged employees you have in your organization. To really analyze whether or not you have an engaged workforce, you need to look at underlying signs that show that employees are putting forth their all at work.
Here is some information all business owners, managers, and HR professionals should know:
How do Employee Satisfaction and Engagement Differ From One Another?
You might want to know what it means to have an engaged employee, but sometimes it is easy to understand the business concept by covering what it does not mean. Before you truly grasp the importance of engagement activities, you would not be wrong in assuming that an engaged employee is typically a happy one. Unfortunately, this does not highlight that making an employee happy is not really making sure the employee is engaged.
Employees can be happy for a multitude of reasons. They could be happy because of the perks of working for the company or the free lunch offered on Fridays. Employee happiness is in no way directly related to productivity. Employees may be happy and willing to show up daily and do their job duties, but satisfied employees are not always willing to push and go the extra mile. Satisfied employees are great, but they only really put forth a discretionary effort when they are engaged and they believe in the companies values and goals.
What are the Benefits of Having Engaged Employees?
When you operate a company with a large population of engaged employees, you have human capital that is working for you and not against you. Many experts have pushed research studies on the effectiveness of engagement and call the benefits of it the Return on Investment of the Engagement-Profit Chain. Here are some of the benefits that make up this chain:
- Higher performance in service
- Increased net sales by up to 300%
- Reduction in quality errors
- Reduction in turnover. Employees are 87 less likely to leave their company when they are engaged
- Drop in absenteeism from 8% to 4.8%
How to Hire Talent and Keep Your Talent Engaged
If you want to keep your employees engaged and motivated, you need to take a look at what engages the most. To have a fully involved employee that does not mentally check out, you need to have your leaders connect with employees and show them that they are really valued. It is also important that employees feel like their work is meaningful and that they can advance in their career instead of just reporting for a 9-to-5 job.
If you clarify the future, give feedback, and contribute to the success of your talent, you can gain a competitive advantage with your engaged workforce. Knowing this as you search for jobs in management and HR can really attract attention to your name and align you with the employee engagement goals of an organization.
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