What is Employee Engagement and Why is it Important to Managers?

 

Investing in employee engagement will improve the quality of work and productivity of the entire business. 

Employee engagement has become one of the key aspects of the development of a company or business. 

Nowadays, employees are more than just 9-to-5 employees. Instead, they want to be more involved with their work. They also want to stay committed to their respected companies, and most importantly, be more productive and enthusiastic about the work they do. 

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at what employee engagement is and why it is so important for managers. 

What is Employee Engagement?

Wikipedia states that a committed employee is ‘one who is entirely absorbed and enthusiastic about their work so that they can take positive actions to promote the reputation and the overall profit of the company. 

In short, a committed employee’s attitude towards the organization or company will always be positive. They will also be enthusiastic with others in bringing out the best outcomes.  

On the contrary, a disengaged employee might not have any such attributes. They can even affect the mindset of other employees negatively.

So, employee engagement has become pretty important for bringing the best out of each and every employee. 

How Employee Engagement can be Improved?

If you are an HR professional, you need to come up with an environment that inspires employees to participate and make them care about their work. 

You should direct your efforts towards improving communication with your employees if you want to build trust, motivation, and commitment with them.

For any company, it is important to ensure that employees are on the same page with changing business priorities. This is one of the significant reasons why internal communication is still so important today.

If your employees lack proper information, how can you expect them to do their jobs properly? When there is proper communication, employees will require less time to complete the given tasks. This can make the entire team more productive.  

Communication is also essential to establish clear expectations. If employees do not have guidance on what is expected from them, they will not know exactly what to do or when. 

Better and more engaging communication will make the tasks smoother and more efficient. 

Employees with good engagement and proper involvement in work are more likely to be consistently productive – which will lead to higher revenues. 

According to Gallup data, companies with a high level of commitment report 22% higher productivity. 

Employers see this trend quickly and invest more in employee involvement. The Workplace Research Foundation found that 38% of employees are more likely to have higher productivity than the average.

Importance of Employee Engagement

When employees are properly engaged, they are more likely to invest more effort into their work. This will result in a higher quality of work. 

In the Harvard Business Review, engaged organizations have double the success rate compared to less engaged organizations. 

Employees who engage more tend to work harder, while disengaged employees are only likely to do as little as possible to get through. 

Moreover, those who are truly committed, are motivated to do their best every day and stay with a company that takes employee participation seriously. 

Your company will only be able to increase productivity, work quality and maintain top talent by investing in employee engagement. 

How HR Uses Communication for Improving Employee Engagement?

When you are able to improve your employee participation and engagement, you are also improving your performance and even increasing your own value as an HR professional.

HR teams might take a few key steps to improve employee involvement and efficient communication. Here are some of the key points that are presented in the Gallup report on employee participation:

• Develop internal communication lines and effectively implement the strategy within your company.
• Promote better transparency of organization by means of communication.
• Communicate business strategies and plans effectively for each team member.
• Encourage open communication between all the employees.
• Recognize and reward employees for their efforts on various grounds.
• To make communication more engaging, you can use different means to have a constant engagement with the entire team. This will lead everyone to open up and you’ll understand your employees better.

All these key points will help you learn to communicate with your staff on the channel of your choice and improve your employee engagement considerably.

Encourage your staff to use social media. This is because around 82% of employees can actually improve their work relations and communications through social media. 

Finally, to establish effective communication and commitment as a manager, you must have a clear and confident attitude towards your team or you risk them seeking help on counseling for interviews and applying for a new job. 

Bottom Line

Employee engagement is indeed one of the most important aspects of developing strong work relationships among colleagues. It can also generate higher productivity among employees.

Moreover, for managers, employee engagement is a key element of bringing the best and most productive outcomes from their teams. So, no matter what, employee engagement is a very important part of making sure that the company is growing as expected.