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17 Feb 2016

Why should you care about employee engagement?

Every company has a mission and core values. But what make them real, almost tangible and inspiring, is how you integrate those daily into your teams. This will subsequently be conveyed to your customers and generate satisfaction.

We found that some organisations try in vain to articulate their values via presentations, posters, pictures, videos, forums, intranet sites and so on… but struggle to make their team really understand them and live them on daily basis. They simply don't feel them.

So how can you improve this?

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Engagement is the key

As resarch firm Bersin by Deloitte stated recently: "The concepts of 'employment brand' and 'employee engagement' have merged into one. Employees communicate your brand externally every day. If you think about it logically engagement is all a company really has."

Want to increase customer satisfaction? First you need to increase employee engagement

Engagement has various meanings for each and every organisation. Nevertheless, there are 3 important elements which very often repeat in people's perception:

1) Recognise: A thank you for good and hard work can mean the world, motivate your team, and simultaneously enable your employees to recognise each other for the values that align with your mission.

According to the Harvard Business Review 2013 72% rank recognition given as having a significant impact on engagement.

2) Socialise: Allowing employers and employees to connect in a friendly manner. Build a sense of community with your private company social network.

3) Reward: KYC (know your customer) is good but KYE (know your employee) is the foundation of this. Reward your team in an ongoing, discretionary way that is valued (outside of the normal pay run).

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” – Stephen R. Covey.

The 3 types of employees

1 – Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organisation forward.

2 – Not-engaged employees are essentially checked out. They’re sleepwalking through their workday, putting time but not energy or passion into their work.

3 – Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they are busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

If you have an engagement or retention problem – you also have an employee brand problem – and you need to look for innovative new solutions that drive value. With 75% of the workforce being millennials by 2020, those new solutions must be mobile and social.

Why does engagement matter?

  • Productivity
  • Profitability
  • Absenteeism
  • Turnover
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Brand image

Essentially how you engage with your employees will have a direct impact on those performances. It is in fact an investment that can greatly benefit both sides, a win/win/win for employees, employers and customers.

"41% of companies that use peer-to-peer recognition have seen marked positive increases in customer satisfaction" - SHRM Employee Recognition survey 2013

Overall, what really matters are your empathy, communication, appreciation and creativity, all these efforts will generate synergy across the team and make your brand value a veritable success.

This article was provided by WorkAngel.