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With knowledge working becoming the norm in many economies, the need for good people increases. The tasks are no longer completed on ‘autopilot’ but require focus, creativity, and collaboration. This new way of working also requires companies to rethink how they want to hire people. Then again, hiring is just the first step. What about retaining talent? Lots of organisations are facing so-called brain drains as key people leave the company. Luckily there is a way to get the best out of your employees: driving engagement with them.
What do we mean by driving engagement?
Employee engagement comprises several fields that focus on the creation of engagement of employees and organisations. This can be very personal, such as the role and the activities the person carries out. On the other hand, it is also related to the organisation as a whole. What is the mission of the company? What is the strategic direction? Does the company carry out these strategic objectives, or is it merely a facade? This all affects how (potential) employees perceive the organisation.
Measuring employee engagement
Luckily it is not only as vague as this – there are methodologies we can leverage. For example, you can send out surveys across the organisation that try to capture all the components of employee engagement. By doing so, you can get an insight into the engagement across the complete organisation. There are tools in the market you can leverage to conduct these activities, which also include analytical capabilities. This not only allows for data gathering but also for reporting and analytics on the data.
Interpreting the results
How do I know if the results are positive? In general, you can see if a person is positive about the organisation or not. The true value, however, lies in benchmarking against competitors and companies active in the same industry. This can be done by using an employee engagement index. This index ranks the companies that have the best engagement and can help you to find your relative position.
Leveraging the employee engagement index
When you have determined your relative position, you can start learning from the competition. What are others doing to have a better engagement? Can I use these techniques and implement these at my organisation? By looking at the deltas between top performers and your organisations, you can gather valuable insights and actionable items.
Finding a partner is half the effort
Leveraging a benchmark is one thing, but it makes sense to engage with a company focusing on employee engagement. As they have helped numerous organisations across industries, they can easily pinpoint areas of improvement. Next to that, a roadmap can be created of improvement initiatives that can be carried out and iterated upon. Does the specific action not result in the desired result? The roadmap can be adjusted with other improvement points to bring the organisation forward. This is more efficient than trying to reinvent the wheel by driving your own initiative from scratch.
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