Keeping employees engaged

Why does employee engagement matter to your organisation?

• $11 billion is lost annually because of employee turnover
• Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202%
• 71% of all employees are not full engaged

Employees will be more loyal and more engaged to their organisation when:

• They feel valued
• They believe their work matters
• They feel they have supportive supervisors

It takes a combination of performance management career management and succession planning to get employees engaged.

1. Performance management

Have a company wide performance management approach to enhance accountability, visibility and employee recognition.

Give your employees support and feedback in order to increase engagement. According to The Energy Project employees who say they have supportive supervisors are 1.3 times more likely to stay with their organisation and 67% are more engaged.

Provide constant feedback; do not wait until the annual performance review to let your employees know how they are going. Giving constant feedback about clear and meaningful goals lets the employees know what is expected of them. Goals can be used to inspire productivity and reward talent.

Having a well-designed performance management process allows for ongoing, interactive feedback coupled with clear development and coaching plans. By doing this organisations are investing in growing their employees; they build high-performing teams and create more engaged and loyal employees.

2. Career management

Employees are always considering their career opportunities, research suggests that up to two thirds of your work force may be looking for a new job or are open to the idea of changing jobs if the opportunity presented itself.

Career development will help employees discover their strengths and the areas that need to be developed. By creating a detailed gap analysis it will make it easier to identify potential successors based on:

• Skill
• Competency
• Experience
• Desire an employee has to hold the job.

Career development has benefits for your organisation as well, it helps you to increase employee retention, develop employees and plan for the future so the decision of who to put into new positions isn’t made in haste.

3. Succession planning

Employees want to know that there is a chance for them to grow and to advance within the organisation.

Instead of grooming someone who is already a part of the organisation to one day move into a bigger role they choose to not think about what will happen when people leave and instead often look externally for someone to fill the role. Doing this does not give the employees much hope of being able to move up.