Article Author: Lorri Freifeld
By Alan E. Hall, Founder and Chairman, MarketStar (now a division of Omnicom)
Imagine half of your workforce going through the motions while looking for other employment. According to a recent Gallup study on employee engagement, approximately 54 percent of employees in the United States are not engaged in their organization (http://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/Majority-American-Workers-Not-Engaged-Jobs.aspx).
Gallup’s research shows that engaged employees are almost twice as likely to want to stay with the company. They also create a higher level of customer satisfaction, which leads to higher profitability. Clearly, instilling and ensuring engagement in your workforce is critical. But how do you accomplish this task?
Employee engagement is critical to the success of an organization and employee performance. Engagement is a result of employees understanding the company’s goals and their role in helping the organization reach those goals. If they believe their goals align with the business strategy, they’ll have a bigger stake in the outcome and become higher performers.
To assess and improve the level of engagement in your own organization, here are the elements to consider:
Through my experience at multinational company MarketStar (now a division of Omnicom), we determined that evaluation in the following areas provide a meaningful measurement of employee engagement:
We assess how well we are doing through an annual company survey. Of the 50-plus questions we ask, we review the answers to six key questions and use their mean scores to determine the degree to which the employees in the organization are truly engaged. Truly engaged employees answer as follows:
Measurement is the first and most critical step in improving employee engagement. At MarketStar, we conduct this step every year (download the graphic below, “Understanding Your Employee Landscape” to see how MarketStar evaluates employees’ likelihood of staying with the company). With this information in hand, managers are better equipped to empower employees by providing clear expectations and feedback that will allow them to fully succeed. By meeting these requirements, companies can steadily improve their employee engagement, which, in turn will improve their customer service and overall profitability.
Source:
http://www.trainingmag.com/content/importance-measurement-employee-engagement