Keeping Your People True Believers
At ARCHER JORDAN, we strongly believe the solutions we provide can fundamentally change and strengthen the very foundation of our client’s company enterprise-wide, and heal its culture. The ensuing response from an enhanced and functional workplace is productivity, savings and a stronger and healthier business.
In a business where you rely on people, your call center agents provide the main line of communication for and representation of your company, it is critical that basic human considerations be attended to, at all times.
What Makes a Difference?
There are ten components that go into measuring an engaged employee. These are the makeup of what engages employees and, if improved, what can create a great company culture. Do the metrics below represent your company culture? Take a look at the list and see if it resonates with your corporate plan. These areas of employee engagement are powerful tools for re-tooling your corporate culture.
Recognition
Lack of recognition is the top reason that people leave their jobs. Companies with engaged employees and a great company culture have significantly lower voluntary turnover.
Feedback
Employees crave feedback that will help them excel at their job. Often, managers are reluctant to give constructive feedback in the fear that they might upset or disengage the employee.
Happiness
It’s important to keep an eye on your employee’s happiness both in and out of work. Happier employees are 12% more productive and are more passionate about work.
Personal Growth
Employees want to grow in and outside of work. Humans are genuinely motivated to have autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which are all part of growing professionally, and as a person.
Satisfaction
Employees have to be satisfied with their environment and enjoy where they work. It’s also important to know if employees are currently satisfied with their wage and benefits.
Wellness
Healthy employees take fewer sick days and have more energy to perform well at work. Eating and sleeping well, along with exercise, will give them the energy to excel at work and be more productive.
Ambassadorship
This comes down to one question, would an employee be willing to recommend their company as a place to work? Employee “ambassadors” lead to better recruitment and strengthen the company’s culture.
Relationship With Managers
Having a good relationship with management will allow employees to work easier and happier. The old expression is “people don’t quit their job, they quit their boss,” so it’s beneficial to see how teams function.
Relationship With Colleagues
Feeling part of a team can have major effects on engagement and motivation. It’s important to optimize the frequency of communication between employees.
Company Alignment
It’s valuable to know how employees feel about the mission, core values, and direction of the company. This helps with engagement and gives clear meaning to why they are there.
How To Improve Employee Engagement
There are many employee engagement activities that you can do to keep your employees engaged, and most of these initiatives are free. These are only a few examples, but they have a long lasting effect on things like happiness, retention, and even hiring. It’s important for a company to create an environment where people want to work, that attracts top talent.
Treat Employees With Respect
Treat your employees the way you’d want to be treated. Offer flex-time, because life gets in the way of work. Create an environment of trust and transparency. Research by Georgetown University found that flexibility is important to employees, with 80% of employees saying they would be happier with more flexible work options. Of those workers who already have flexibility at work, 90% said it eased the burden of work-life balance.
A study conducted by Harvard University showed that enhancing trust and employee commitment creates an environment that fosters happy, committed, productive team members.
Let Employees Be Themselves
There is a lot of psychology behind letting employees be themselves at work. One of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s favorite interview questions is “On a scale from 1-10, how weird are you?” to encourage employees to be unique, and to remind candidates that they embrace people being “weird”. It’s called Authentic Self-expression. When people start to not behave like themselves, they start to question themselves and they become disengaged.
Give Back
Your business should be providing value to the community or society as a whole. This is a very easy way to get employees passionate about your company. One study found that 81% of Millennials expect companies to make a public commitment to good corporate citizenship and that they remain loyal customers of companies that have built philanthropy into their business strategy. Corporate philanthropy has also been found to boost employee retention rates.
Start With Why
This is about understanding your purpose. This is key for employees to be able to get passionate. They need to be able to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Everyone should learn more about a concept called The Golden Circle, from Simon Sinek, who talks about it in his famous TED talk about how leaders should be communicating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Tw0PGcyN0
Make employees your priority. They’ll make you theirs.
