The Top 5 Drivers of Employee Engagement

Could employee engagement be the key to customer happiness and business success? According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, they are directly linked as engagement performance indicators. However, the study found that only 24% of respondents said their employees were engaged even though 71% rank employee engagement as very important to achieving organizational success.

So how do we support employees to go the extra mile for the organization? Taken from what we’ve learned from the 500,000+ employees that use our platform, here are Interact’s top engagement drivers:

1.Executive support and participation

Leaders shape employee beliefs and behavior. Senior-level support needs to be present for employee engagement to happen, and it’s usually a lead-by-example formula for success.

The best way for leadership to embrace communication is to use tools that allow them to quickly and easily share ideas and news with employees, targeted segments, or the entire workforce. Blogs serve as ideal communications channels that sometimes provide the added functionality of segmenting groups within the organization for targeting specific messages. This kind of platform allows the message to be effectively delivered and for employees to comment, like and share – a great recipe for engagement.

2.Recognition

Allowing both managers and peers to recognize good work is a very powerful way to engage employees. Asking them to share positive feedback with each other can have an immeasurable influence on morale, encourage hard work and create a workplace culture of respect, appreciation and collaboration.

A rewards scheme can take an employee’s performance and turn it into an opportunity for engagement. Interact’s Rewards Widget drives employees to achieve great things, to go above and beyond for both their colleagues and themselves.

3.Surveys

Surveys and questionnaires have traditionally been used to engage customers and get the data you need to make or keep them happy; they can do the same for your workforce.

Engagement surveys provide snapshots of employee sentiment and can give important insight into where issues lie in the organization

Internal surveys provide multiple benefits. First, the workforce sees that their opinions are being heard and valued. Secondly, the management team gets the valuable information they need to make their employees’ work lives easier, more enjoyable and productive.

The bottom line is that employers need to meet the changing expectations of the new workplace, and surveys provide a window into what those expectations are.

4.Providing the information they need to succeed

Optimizing content discovery can bring about exceptional engagement and business results. We at Interact understand this to be one of the most important contributing factors to an employee’s success – the ability to quickly and easily access the content needed to get the job done.

According to the 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 47% of people believe that the news coming from other employees is credible. This statistic speaks to the importance of developing and maintaining the integrity of your organization’s information through an easy-to-use content management system. A dynamic CMS will encourage content creation, distribution and consumption in a controlled environment – another great recipe for engagement.

Furthermore, intelligent content visibility and information discovery helps employees feel more informed and connected to the business and its goals.

5.Aligning employee goals to business goals

Studies show an increase in business performance when individual employee goals are aligned with the company’s overall strategy. Employees should know how their work can make an impact on the business. One such study by the Workforce Intelligence Institute found that “companies that more closely aligned goals across their organization enjoyed much higher levels of financial success.”

Does your workforce know what the overall business goals are and how their work supports the organization in achieving them? Organizational goal alignment has been directly linked to decreased employee turnover and increased efficiencies.

To sum it up, employee engagement is a critical component of business success and intranet technology can support organizations with simple communications tools to integrate engagement directly into workflow and KPIs.