In this article, I'll discuss the importance and strategic convenience of engaging your employees, and I will describe its benefits and impact in your company.
Why should we invest and actively look for teams that are engaged and aligned with the business objectives? It's an easy answer: to avoid attrition, talent loss and, even worst, undesired turnover related to critical positions in our company (that 20% that makes 80% of the money!).
Let's analyze the context and the reality of the job market (doesn't matter where is your company located) in terms of "Employee Experience": employees are quitting their jobs more than ever, and studies show that voluntary turnover rate is now over 15%. (This means almost one in six people are leaving their jobs voluntarily to look for another one.)
At the same time, people are working more hours, undergoing more stress, and feel less productive than ever. In fact productivity is slowing (output per hour worked) and most economists can’t even agree on why is this happening.
So, how can you keep your high performers under your roof and how can you keep them engaged and aligned with your business goals and strategy?
Depending of the size of your company, the actions that you can perform may vary. For small & medium size companies and businesses, where money is limited because of an equally limited Return of Investment (ROI), the HR Professional must make good use of its soft skills and detect which actions can be performed. First, a good HR Manager should know the social climate and employee satisfaction, whether it's by one-on-one contact with each employee or conducting employee satisfaction surveys. Performance appraisal results and years in the company is also relevant data to consider when the time to make decisions and take actions comes.
If the company you work for is a big corporation with big HR budget and means, employee satisfaction and employee engagement can be measured with the proper HR ERP. There are several vendors in the market: SAP Successfactors, Oracle, Peoplesoft, etc. Choose one. Implement all its capabilities. Extract the data you need. As with a SMB case, employee satisfaction surveys, performance appraisal results, years in the company, are also useful. If you know how to do it, a ONA (Organizational Networking Analysis) is a powerful tool too. It can reveal outliers, information silos and employees that are disengaged and out of touch within the company.
What have this two scenarios (SMB's and Big MNC) have in common? The decision and actions that you take, must be data driven. Don't let yourself be fooled by HR professionals that function guided by "gut feeling" or intuition. It will not work.
For more info and/or if you want this services to be provided in your company, don't hesitate and get in touch with us.