As a loyal reader of our Tuesday Read blog you might remember the last discussion of the connection between employee engagement and numerically measured corporate success. We outline here how increased employee engagement will positively impact business results such as productivity.
Even in regular times, low employee engagement is a challenge for many companies. According to a Gallup study of 2018, 71% of employees are not engaged while 14% are actively disengaged. A disengaged workforce has severe consequences for a company’s productivity while research has also shown that companies with high employee engagement are 21% more profitable.
According to Zenefit newest research of more than 600 US businesses with 50-500 employees,” 63.3% of companies say retaining employees is actually harder than hiring them.” One of the key reasons is, apart from higher potential earnings, poor interpersonal relationships like conflicts with the manager or with colleagues, leading to disengagement.
What we answer in this article is:
What is employee engagement? How to tackle it?
What is employee engagement?
An engaged employee is passionate about their work and finds fulfilment in their role. Hence, she is willing and eager to further the organisation’s success. However, investing in employee engagement isn’t about making employees ‘happy’. Just think about it: also a happy employee isn’t necessarily engaged with their job.
Willis Towers Watson defines employee engagement as „the employee’s rational and emotional attachment to the company and willingness to exert extra effort on its behalf (e.g., the classic ‚Think, Feel and Act‘ model)“. In fact, they talk about “Sustainable Engagement”.
Employee engagement is closely linked to the experience that an employee gains, starting with the application process and the first interviews, through the various roles and different setups in his or her organisation. Every single touch point can influence the employee experience (EX) positively or negatively. In the end, it is the sum of all impressions that counts, which determines the degree of commitment. In Short: the right employees engagement (EE) impacts an employee‘s experience (EX) positively. It will reduce employee turnover, according to Zenefits by 59%.
We believe that today more than ever the war for talents is carried out and won through the right personnel management based on an effective employee engagement strategy. Hence, employees and leaders need the right skills to design a remote work environment that maximises engagement in a virtual team.
Maria has been a (successful) leader, coach, trainer, and consultant for 15 years. She has held leadership positions at Google, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and in the online startup world. Maria holds a PhD in mathematics and is the founder of three companies of her own.
Virtual Academy Employee Engagement Model along five dimensions.
We consider five dimensions in order to gain a deeper understanding of the degree and quality of employee engagement in the company: Contribution, Transparency, Autonomy, Belonging, and Well-Being. If one of these dimensions becomes unstable, this can already have a negative impact on the overall performance of an employee.
1. Contribution
Understanding your specific contribution to the larger goals of your organisation. Questions we ask are: What contribution can my employee make at the moment? How much is she aware of this?
What understanding does he have of the longer-term objectives and purpose of the company (or at least of his own area)? Behind this there is a decisive shift in priorities for employees: when for the generation of baby boomers, a job was primarily providing a steady paycheck, nowadays, a sense of purpose, the opportunity for self-development and the social aspect of work make an important difference for people when choosing a workplace. For women even more than men, according to the latest women at work study by Gallup.
2. Transparency
Clarity and openness with which leadership communicates decision-making and makes information available. What access does my employee have to the necessary information in order to be able to manage his or her task in a meaningful way and also to assume lateral leadership? Is it clear to everyone how decision-making processes for the usual procedures look like? Is it clear what benefits and purposes new processes have and how they can be integrated into the old ones? Contribution and transparency are important basic factors for everyone to live the following aspect of autonomy.
3. Autonomy
Ability to shape your work and environment in ways that allow you to perform at your best.
This starts with the basics: the right equipment, mainly hardware and software. According to a study from May 2020, 40% of the employees surveyed in Germany are hardly able to accomplish their work with the hardware provided.
Autonomy stands in close “Ying & Yang” with visionary leadership that promotes creativity and diversity. It sounds simple at first. But this is where the high art of management lies, namely self-management. We will discuss this in more detail in a following blog post.
4. Belonging
A sense that I can fully be myself and can connect socially to my colleagues.
In the current COVID-19 era, we see that our customers cope with the challenge of losing team members. Due to the loss of physical connection, at the same time the full days with non-stop video conferencing, the small moments of being together, which are important for us as human beings, are missing, in which we strengthen our sense of belonging and the emotional connection to others.
Read on below what this means for good leadership.
5. Well-Being
To have the time, space and opportunities to manage mental and physical health.
As to read in our Tuesday Read Facts you need to know about Remote Work to learn from COVID-19, ‘53% of employees say greater work-life balance and personal wellbeing are „very important“ to them when considering whether to take a new job.’
According to Gallup’s and Healthways’s research (Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index), five elements represent broad categories of well-being that are essential to most people — men and women alike:
Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
Community: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community
Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily
Across all levers presented, an engagement strategy for a company will not be enhanced without understanding the individual and group collective mindset and needs. And this is where empathy comes into play.
Engagement needs empathy to manifest.
Employees who feel a strong connection to their workplace show passion in their everyday work, feel energised and are committed to their contribution. Sometimes so strongly that it becomes difficult for a manager to open up other perspectives on a situation to a fiercely arguing employee.
Our call: Make emotions presentable in your company. This does not only mean allowing or supporting joyful moments benevolently. Your employees also express their passion for their job through other emotions such as anger or even fear. Take up these signals and look behind the scenes to identify the trigger moments.
And try to differentiate: is this individual a highly motivated employee who feels a strong connection to his job and the organisation and, for example, fears that an interesting task will be taken away from him, or do I see a person in front of me who is frustrated because, for example, she does not understand what contribution she is making to the overall project and needs more orientation and guidance to show commitment.
In both cases, the insights you’ll gain are very valuable and will give you the opportunity to react accordingly. If you allow emotions to be expressed, i.e. you enter into dialogue on an emotional basis, there is a high chance of increasing the bond with employees.
To close with this article, it should be noted that empathy was not “invented” by new working environments. Sometimes even the opposite is true: as leading personnel consultant Heiner Thorborg rightly points out in his article in the Manager Magazin, in digital, fast-paced environments it is sometimes forgotten what extensive experience in natural managerial empathy the „older“ generations embodied. We would certainly do well to return to the qualities of great business leaders of the past.
You’re interested in how to analyse your team or organisation along these five dimensions of engagement, and want to get deeper insights? Read more in our next Tuesday Read blog posts in September and October.
What’s next
We will further discuss the topic of “belonging” and give some practical advice on how to advance your leadership empathy skills. Because yes: this is something one can learn and develop.
Stay tuned:) We are looking forward to seeing you soon!
Advantage is built on empathy.
The Virtual Academy conducts all courses based on an underlying strategic perspective. There are two compact courses that teach your leadership how to excel as a virtual leader, and another how to work in teams efficiently. Ultimately, they will help you boost your company’s productivity.
