More and more often, companies find themselves unprepared for the increase in turnover, showing that they do not really know the engagement level of their workers: how can corporate engagement be measured and improved?
The Covid-19 Pandemic has brought with it some phenomena such as the Great Resignations, which reflect people's growing interest in work-life balance and the loss of sense of belonging to their companies: let's see together how companies can increase corporate employee engagement, measuring it objectively and defining concrete actions to improve it.
Corporate engagement: what is it about?
When we talk about corporate engagement, we mean a set of factors that include motivation and involvement of employees, together with their sense of belonging to the organization they are part of.
Engaged employees are people who feel part of the company they work for, who share its principles and vision, who develop an authentic sense of loyalty and get satisfaction from their job.
On the contrary, people who do not feel included and motivated will soon become dissatisfied and even less productive, failing to channel energy and passion into their profession, which sooner or later will most likely leave to look for something else. For companies with low levels of engagement it will be even more difficult to deal with changes or simply to innovate, because they will not find a good response in the attitude of their employees.
Corporate engagement is therefore a set of factors that primarily derives from the leadership style and the culture itself of the organization: it is necessary that top management is well equipped with measurement tools and that it adopts a strategy to improve it and keep it at high-level, to ensure better performance and concrete results.
How to measure corporate engagement?
We know that in order to understand how to improve a factor, first of all it’s necessary to be able to measure it: the main way to measure corporate engagement level is through a survey. Either it can be on paper or online, but the most important thing is that it has to be well structured to collect suggestions and understand people's opinions and dissatisfactions arising from the corporate culture.
To be truly effective, a good survey has to be part of an engagement strategy, and not identified as a one-off action in the hope that sending a listening signal will be enough to motivate employees. People has to feel free to express their opinions, even of dissent, so it is important to protect the identity of those who fill it in, keeping the necessary information on the organizational area to which they belong or on seniority for example: this in order to be able later on to make an accurate result analysis.
An effective survey has to be able to identify what is most important to employees: it must therefore include questions that stimulate reflection on aspects such as confidence in the future, career opportunities, relationships within teams and with superiors, value recognition, individual needs related to bonuses, holidays or simply to remuneration, working environment and social-cultural or Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, training offer, corporate welfare and wellbeing, internal communication and sharing of corporate macro-objectives. In this way it will be possible to understand what are people interests and how to involve them more actively with concrete actions and campaigns.
It is essential to include all the factors that actually make up the Employee Value Proposition and understanding the opinion of its employees to make clear if the offered value is really perceived or if it is insufficient compared to the expressed needs.
The analysis must be periodic, proposing similar surveys over time and sharing the results with the employees: it is essential that they understand the company's intention and understand that listening to their needs and feelings is part of an ongoing and authentic commitment.
Employee Engagement: how to improve corporate engagement?
Once the level of involvement of its employees has been measured and analysed, a concrete strategy is needed to improve it or at least to keep it at high levels.
The first step is to "shorten the distance" between management and employees: creating opportunities for recreational meeting and sharing, for example to present company results or share company performance, are useful initiatives to make people really feel “part” of the global corporate project.
Depending on the results of the periodic surveys, it will be necessary to structure an action plan based on the priorities identified by the employees' responses: create corporate welfare and wellbeing plans, offer stimulating and interactive training programs, define a more effective internal communication plan and engaging, proposing initiatives in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility or sharing commitments on sustainable development - these are just some examples of initiatives that companies can undertake in a Corporate Engagement improvement plan.
Last but not least: “Leading by example”. People need authentic leaders to guide and inspire them, who are everyday examples of collaboration and example of ethical and moral values. Any engagement strategy is destined to fail without a strong and motivated leadership.
In the era of smart-working and remote working, an even greater effort is needed to be able to keep high the engagement of smart-workers, who have fewer "physical" or "presence" opportunities to maintain relationships and “experiencing” the physical workplace environment. It is therefore essential that the company takes action to address this, identifying alternative and creative solutions, exploiting the support of technology and the application of Artificial Intelligence to the Employee Experience, to increase engagement and encourage the involvement of employees not present. in company premises, ensuring effective communication and the creation of a pleasant and comfortable digital work environment.
Glickon Grow solutions, at the forefront of innovative techniques and flexible tools, are designed to engage employees from the first to the last day, quickly and easily for both HR and employees.
