Benefits of Employee Engagement
I had an interesting conversation with a friend this morning. She was telling me about the HR department at her company.
She mentioned that they have absolutely no interest in actively solving employee issues. They are more interested in sucking up to management and sweeping issues under the rug—hoping they’ll just go away.
She assured me the message from management was loud and clear: “Every person at this company is replaceable, so behave or leave.”
This is the attitude at thousands of businesses around the world. What business owners don’t realize, is that this attitude hurts their business more than it hurts their staff.
Companies that actively engage their employees see lower staff turnaround, higher productivity and increased profits.
What about your company?
What’s the point of it all? Conducting an employee engagement assessment at your company can be a time-consuming exercise. Before you conduct one, recognize the importance of doing so and let’s aim to get a strong return on investment from this exercise.
Employee engagement is a term that HR managers recognize as one of the most important factors within a company.
But why is it so important? What’s the end goal to encouraging and manging employee engagement?
Analysing the Benefits of Employee Engagement and How they Relate toProfits
We asked 77 managers whether they felt employee engagement had a positive impact on their company’s profits. Surprisingly, 40 of them (52%) said that employee engagement was just a procedure and had nothing to do with profit increase.
Errrr… Wrong! Let’s be honest. It’s all about the bottom line, right?Open communication between staff and management is integral to growth, work satisfaction and productivity.
If employee engagement wasn’t profitable, companies wouldn’t be implementing it. The fact is employee engagement is a sound financial business decision.
Here are four reasons why.
Employee Retention
Hiring new staff costs money!
One of the main objectives to employee engagement is to reduce staff turnaround. According to a survey we conducted, 58% of HR managers said that employee engagement had significantly improved their staff retention.
This ultimately saves companies thousands in training, hiring procedures and time. Employee retention has also been shown to improve overall productivity because of the absence of disruption brought on by staff change.
Having the “everyone’s replaceable” attitude means companies will experience more staff turnaround. And this costs them:
- It’s time consuming to hire and train new staff
- The disruption in changing staff members costs productivity time.
- The time it takes for the new staff member to get accustomed to systems, procedures and team members can take anywhere between three to six months. You’re paying for all that lost time!
Ultimately, growing your staff members is cheaper than training new ones.
Company and Employee Growth
The point of growing your employees is ultimately to grow your company.
And I don’t need to tell you that growth equals profits.
A by-product of staff retention is individual employee growth. Overall, this has a huge impact on your company’s development. If your people are developing within the company, it means the company itself is moving in the right direction.
According to 79% of HR managers, management staff at their respective companies have responded well to employee engagement processes since they’ve been implemented.
That’s no surprise, is it? They’ve probably responded well to the process because ithelped them get to where they are. It’s also helped them communicate and connect with their teams more effectively.
So here’s a secret to their success: We see in many of these companies that managers are developed, groomed and promoted into their positions.
You probably have staff at your company who have no interest in being promoted. They want more pay, but they aren’t keen to take on additional work.
But there are dynamic, ambitious individuals who want to expand their careers and take on new responsibilities. Tap into their potential and use it to grow your company and your respective employees.
If you aren’t engaging your employees, how do you know who’s promotion material and who’s not?
Happy Customers
Happy customers make successful businesses. Happy customers return business. Happy customers tell their friends about their positive experiences with companies.
Happy customers equal profits!
Many HR managers are unsure whether employee engagement has an impact on the end user—the customer. This makes it difficult to ascertain whether employee engagement is increasing customer satisfaction, since many HR managers don’t have contact with customers at all.
But the stats on this front are positive too. 56% say they saw a noticeable improvement in customer satisfaction. We can also safely assume that a large portion of the remaining 44% are positive too, just not directly noticeable from closed offices.
This is not a surprising statistic at all. It goes without saying that employees who are content will deliver better service to your customers.
Higher Productivity
One of the most important objectives to employee engagement is to increase productivity. Keeping employees satisfied and happy makes them work more efficiently.
Most HR managers will agree that an increase in productivity is the main goal of employee retention. But if only 48% of HR managers can attest to an increase in ROI, then we must look at why the other half cannot.
Whether or not employee engagement is being done correctly depends on… well, you as the HR manager.
If done correctly, employee engagement will result in higher productivity. Why?
- Because a happy employee is a hardworking and driven employee
- Because employees feel motivated to grow within the company, and they work hard toward that growth
- Because employees develop trust and security in a company where communication is clear
- Because employees who have been doing their jobs for a long time will do those jobs well due to their familiarity with their tasks
Employee Engagement That’s Geared at Generating Profits?
A whopping 94% of HR managers don’t even recognise the main objective to employee engagement. Objectives like higher productivity and staff retention are only secondary.
Ultimately,PROFIT is the main objective.
How do you implement and run employee engagement in such a way that it generates profits? Here are a few suggestions:
Look at certain aspects of an employee’s appointment that delivers potential ROI to the company. This can be anything like,
- how happy they are in their positions (resulting in better overall staff retention)
- what their respective career goals are (to encourage individual growth)
- what their salary expectations are (a minor salary increase versus hiring a new staff member can be a significant one)
- how valued they feel as employees (resulting in productivity)
A Business Transformation from the Inside Out
When you set and achieve these goals, you will see an increase in profits. And that’s why you implemented employee retention in the first place, right?
Look at this graph showing a comparison of employees being engaged and employees being left alone:
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Employee’s Being Engaged |
Employees Being Left Alone |
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Workers feel part of the company, appreciated as assets and have direction regarding their purpose. |
Employees are left in the dark, unsure of whether they have job security and unclear whether their superiors are pleased with their performance. |
|
Staff members have a set goal in mind for growth. So they work towards a tangible promotion rather than a hoped-for one. |
Workers blindly work towards promotion without clear direction or assurance that the promotion will be theirs. |
|
Employees gain work satisfaction because they feel like they have purpose and direction within the company. |
Staff are usually disgruntled because they don’t feel heard. |
|
Employees work harder because there’s more motivation for success. |
Workers feel hard-done by and therefore neglect their duties or perform them half-heartedly. |
|
Staff are more likely to remain at the company for years, even decades, because they have job security. |
Staff leave regularly and new staff come in who require training, extra attention and often a higher salary. |
Companies honestly can’t afford NOT to implement employee engagement. In a competitive business world, the only way to stay afloat will be to ensure harmony from within. This is what employee engagement does.
This is not about sticking to procedure. it’s not about due diligence. This is about survival. If your company is dying (and my friend’s company is), then analyze how your employees are affecting your profits through their work attitudes, job satisfaction and sense of purpose.
48% of HR managers can attest to profit increases at their companies after implementing employee engagement. My theory is that they’re doing it right! If you see employee engagement as just another empty procedure, you’re doomed to miss out on the benefits.
Conclusion
We’d love to hear from you about your experiences with employee engagement. Where do you see this procedure going unless people recognize its importance?
There’s so much more to learn about employee engagement. But we must perfect it as a procedure before we can expand on its potential.
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