Change Your Employee Engagement Culture
Author: Nancy Zentis, CEO Institute of OD
Employee engagement is one of the biggest challenges organizations are facing in today’s workplace. With so many people leaving the workforce, hiring new employees is becoming more and more difficult. Employers are faced with critical challenges finding employees and getting work done.
Many industries, such as service industries, are losing employees for better-paying jobs with benefits. During the pandemic, many employees found themselves out of work and without pay, benefits or childcare. Returning to work after two years is not an easy transition. With the increased cost of gas, childcare, and the time spent traveling to and from work, the time and expense in creating a dilemma – should I find a gig opportunity or return to full-time work? If you are like many companies facing labor shortages, you may want to change some of your engagement strategies.
Here are some engagement strategies that might be helpful!
- Find out what employees need– a flexible work schedule, work based on outcomes not hours, tuition reimbursement, childcare benefits, work from home, interaction, feedback, job satisfaction, career growth, and compensation other than salary.
- Create an employee engagement assessment that will provide meaningful data. Form a focus group to create the questions, ask questions that leaders can support, and conduct interviews by telephone or in person to collect information. You’ll get more than just an answer with a personal approach.
- Find out what keeps employees satisfied in their jobs! Ask questions to find out how they feel about the organization, their manager, and their role.
- Design employee engagement strategies and solutions using an OD Approach. This involves identifying the needs, the cause of the problems, and creating actions to address the problems. Project teams of diverse groups work well to create engagement strategies and solutions.
- Track employee engagement to drive organizational success. Identify employee engagement metrics impacting the organization such as voluntary attrition, retention, turnover, engagement, and measurement criteria to measure outcomes to past metrics.
- Identify employee engagement strategies that work and implement them! Recruitment strategies, onboarding, leadership development, career development, feedback, advancement, training and development, recognition, team involvement, career paths, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, and offering flexible work options.
- Although a flexible work environment seems desirable, employees also need to be held accountable for outcomes – provide clear goals, define tasks, give challenging work, set performance goals, offer frequent check-ins, and give feedback on performance.
- Prioritize Recognition. Acknowledging when your employees are doing great can go a long way in developing high-performing employees.
There are many successful employee engagement strategies you could implement; however, the above strategies are effective starting points. The more creativity and diversity you can create into the workplace, the more employees will feel valued and have a sense of belongingness. Emotional well-being is greatly needed in the workplace as we recover from one crisis after another.
Final Thoughts: When identifying new engagement strategies remember to address any culture issues that are linked to employee dissatisfaction. If leaders are not willing to support engagement or are only focused on results and outcomes, employee engagement will suffer.
To achieve success, you need to change your leadership style and culture. Here are some final thoughts:
- Uphold Your Core Values
- Carve Out Career Paths
- Provide Opportunities for Growth
- Recognize Top Performers
- Promote Transparency
- Allow for Honest Feedback
- Hold Employees Accountable
- Hold Yourself Accountable
About the Author:
Dr. Nancy Zentis is the CEO of the Institute of Organization Development. She is recognized as a leader in the field of OD with over 40 years of experience. She is the founder of the Institute of Organization Development, an award winning, globally recognized organization providing OD Certification Programs to support the professional growth of those who have a passion for the field of OD. For more information about OD Certification, www.instituteod.com
She is the founder of GIODN, a global OD professional network, that provides members with monthly presentations with experts in the field, a monthly book club, where authors present their latest book, and a virtual OD meeting. GIODN offer members a variety of downloadable OD tools, a membership directory, blog articles, podcasts, and YouTube videos of past presentations. For more information and how to become a member, www.giodn.org.
She can be reached at Nancy.zentis@instituteod.com