Businesses are growing faster, and a lot of companies are adopting new practices to increase their revenue. They need to assimilate new practices with minimum or zero investment in their organizations that could increase the productivity of their business. The best way one could accomplish this is by adopting new technologies and keeping their employees happy. But there is a way we could marry these two steps together in order to make our business a little more successful.
Your workforce needs to be motivated and satisfied if you want those numbers that you are expecting. If you want your employees to perform higher, then you ought to create the right conditions for them, so that they give their best every day. One of the ways by which your CEOs are ranked is based on how happy they keep their employees. One of the reasons why top companies like Google, American Express, Hyatt, etc. steal your thunder is because the opinions of their employees matter to them. They ensure that they have that amount of transparency in their communication systems.
We have established that engaged employees bring a positive outcome to your business, but how exactly do we practice employee engagement and how can we leverage technology to do this for us. Executing employee engagement becomes a lot easier if we partner it with technology such as a performance management software. When we build digital platforms, the value of your business goes up. Today more than 85% of US stock market valuation is based on intangible assets, and these are all people-related things such as intellectual property, services, brand, customer loyalty (Bersin, 2019).
In this article, I shall discuss why employee engagement is important and how we could implement employee engagement using technology.
Why employee engagement?
According to a recent study conducted by Gallup, only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. Employee engagement is a practice by which organizations motivate employees so that they are enthusiastic about their work and are committed towards the objectives and values of the organization. By creating the right conditions for your employees, you can keep them motivated so that they are encouraged to give their best to increase the productivity of the organization. Every organization is number-driven and customer oriented. If you want your customers to be satisfied, then you also need to ensure that your employees are satisfied.
A survey conducted by StaffConnect in the year 2018 stated that “many enterprises are still over-reliant on limited-reach legacy communications to share information with employees, that engagement remains unmeasured in many organizations, and that most organizations have plans to implement initiatives to improve the employee experience in 2018.”
How to use a performance management system to drive employee engagement?
Cultivating an optimistic feedback culture
Feedback is the backbone of performance management and employee engagement. An organization needs to create a positive feedback culture that facilitates progressive discussions on an employee’s performance. Not only that, but the organization must also ensure that feedback that is generated must be constructive and not biased and subjective. At the same time, you must also ensure that you listen to your employees as well. It is important that you solicit feedback from your employees because it is only fair that they want their words to be valued.
Luckily, with the advent of technology, the feedback mechanism has become a continuous, timely and on-going one. At this point, I would like to bring in the importance of 360 Degree reviews. The 360 Degree review mechanism solicits feedback from multiple sources in the form of self-evaluation, peer evaluation, and ratings from customers and vendors and superiors. For instance, there is a comprehensive 360 Degree tool available in Synergita, that could make this process easier for organizations.
With the help of such a continuous feedback mechanism, it becomes a lot easier for companies to engage their employees because communication is transparent and accurate. Moreover, feedback is intended to develop the employees in terms of their skills, values, and behaviors. When there is a scope for self-actualization and empowerment in your feedback, then your employees get an opportunity to work on themselves and stay motivated.
Importance of employee engagement surveys
According to research conducted by Global Industry Analyst Josh Bersin, over 60% of companies didn’t survey their employees at all, and those that did only did it once a year. But conducting employee engagement surveys is not rocket science. It has become a lot easier for companies to conduct these surveys with the help of tools and software available in the market. Everything happens at the click of a button.
All you must do is setup employee engagement surveys in your performance management software. What you do on sheets of paper, you just need to do it on a computer. The rationale behind conducting an employee engagement survey is to improve the work culture of your organization and measure how engaged your employees are. The best part about employee engagement surveys is that you can protect the personal identity of the employee by soliciting anonymous feedback. Your employees may feel more at ease to share their opinions without worrying about your reaction.
After you get the survey results, it will become easier for you to analyze what can be done to increase a people-friendly culture. You will be able to make informed decisions about what works best for your employees and what does not. Moreover, it will give you an opportunity to introspect in terms of your leadership and people management skills. When you create this kind of inclusive work culture, your employees will realize that the company is equally invested in their careers.
Appreciating and Rewarding your Employees
Dr. Ashley Whillans, Assistant Professor from the Harvard Business School quoted once, “what really matters in the workplace is helping your employees feel appreciated.” According to Dr. Whillans, “More than 80 percent of American employees say they do not feel recognized or rewarded, even though US companies are spending more than a fifth of their budgets on wages.”
An employee needs to feel recognized and appreciated for his work in order to feel competent have a sense of belonging to the organization. I distinctly remember when I was in primary, my class teacher would often reward the students by giving them stationery and making them class prefects for a month. She would make me lead the class for a month if I had finished my homework on time and behaved well in class. This was her way of motivating me and the other kids.
You can apply the same principle here, only replacing your stationery with financial rewards, bonuses, and incentives. Sometimes, it is not monetary, you could even appreciate your employees by expressing gratitude and giving them notes of appreciation on their portal. Since we spoke about continuous feedback in digitized form, you could use that digital platform to send them real-time feedback along with appreciation. When you give them timely appreciation and rewards, you motivate them to work harder, they get to inspire the other employees and have better job satisfaction.
Conclusion
Using technology such as performance management software, you can increase the overall effectiveness of the organization and boost employee engagement. It needs to function on a regular basis and employees must be made aware of the corporate goals and values well in advance. With this, employees will get a sense of how well they are contributing to the organization’s growth and fulfilling their own career aspirations. With the help of a positive feedback culture and recognition and developmental plans, you can improve employee engagement and increase their own profitability.