Employee engagement: why it matters and how you can boost it

Engaging employees is vital to the success of a business. This is because engagement impacts productivity, as well as retention. At The Workplace Event, which we recently attended in Birmingham, one of the presentations explored how businesses can measure and improve employee engagement. Here’s our round-up of what business owners should be looking to do.

The challenges businesses face when trying to engage employees

At The Workplace Event, we attended a presentation called “Employee Engagement: Challenging Assumptions with Data” by Chris Moriarty, co-founder and director of Audiem, a company which collects workforce feedback. Using data, he explained how companies often fail to improve engagement effectively.

According to Gallup, 77% of the US workforce is not engaged, a historically low figure. We know that motivated employees tend to increase productivity, have enhanced job satisfaction and display improved job performance, thus increasing turnover. So it is important businesses do not overlook the value of engagement.

What are the pitfalls of employee surveys?

Surveys are a common way to measure employee engagement within an organisation. Chris shared that the problem is that companies are often carrying out annual staff surveys and sharing the results with employees, without taking consequential action.

Chris described some other common issues with surveys.

• Surveys are subjective – the answers reflect how the employee feels at the time of completing the survey but may not demonstrate how they feel most of the time at work.
• There’s often too much focus on numerical scores in survey design.
• There is a lack of actionable insights in survey data.
• Surveys are limited in scope, so organisational challenges and factors that adversely impact employee performance may be missed.
• There is a risk of survey fatigue as employees become fed up of doing surveys.

Some organisations are happy to see employee survey scores increase despite a lack of supporting evidence that it is due to organisational change.

It is better, says Chris, to use a holistic method of gauging workplace experience. “We have fallen into a trap of focusing on the scores and how to get a bigger score. We don’t understand why we have got that score and this leads to survey fatigue. People get bored because nothing is done about the survey results.”

Gallup claim that Gen Z employees  and remote workers are feeling increasingly disconnected from their organisational culture and remote. This must be addressed as these two groups are set to increase within the workforce in the coming years.

What should companies do to boost employee engagement?

According to Chris, businesses need to move away from ratings, scores and smiley emojis in surveys and start really listening to their employees.

He explained how organisations can improve surveys by seeking comments from employees. Comments could be divided into positive, negative and neutral feedback; they can be categorised depending on whether the feedback is about colleagues, workspace, technology etc. These categories can be related if they share common themes. It’s then possible to use analytics to filter results by demographics such as age or gender.

Chris said: “This supercharges employee workspace experience insights.”

He related how Audiem had recently worked with a leading UK high street bank. The bank had office and hybrid employees and wanted to improve their workforce surveys. Audiem stepped in and got 10,000 respondents to provide written feedback.

From the results, the bank discovered that employees coming into the office wanted to sit next to their friends. So it adapted the desk booking tool to enable this.

Audiem’s service helped the bank forge better relationships between its HR and IT teams as they were using a common data set. The property management side of the business then collaborated with HR and IT to create a new workplace charter, which united different teams around shared values.

The bank then adopted a ‘test and learn’ mindset. It runs small pilots for new ideas to test employee feedback.

Chris shared: “They have created an eco-system of data which they can use all year, instead of just once a year.”

Audiem has some exciting plans for the future, including tools to obtain spoken, instead of written, employee feedback; and using translation tools to cater to the needs of staff whose first language is not English. It’s clear from Chris’s expert advice that it’s worth taking time to consider how you measure employee engagement. And it’s also really important to act on what the data reveals about your organisation.

Our tips to improve employee engagement:

How team building can boost employee engagement

One way to boost employee engagement is through team-building activities. Here’s how bringing your employees together, outside of your regular workplace setting, and encouraging social interaction can boost your business:

• Encouraging socialising in the workplace helps your employees stay engaged because it promotes a friendly and welcoming environment.
• Facilitating teamwork and co-ordination between employees will develop trust and communication between team members, making their workflows more efficient.
• Providing the opportunity for innovation and collaboration can lead your employees to share knowledge, improve levels of understanding and come up with new ideas.
• Improving problem solving abilities, by encouraging team members to work together, can allow your employees to deepen their understanding of how each member works and how they can collectively find solutions by playing to individual strengths.

Some examples of team-building activities are:

• an activity away day e.g. laser tag or paintballing
• escape rooms
• creative activities such as painting
• forming a sports team or running club
• volunteering together for a charity
• going to a pub quiz or hosting your own quiz

The main idea with team building is to create a social setting, so team members can interact on a more personal level and build connections outside their professional relationships.

Even if you just take your team out for a meal, you will derive some of the benefits. Treating your team can make them feel valued and appreciated – so it’s a win-win!

If you are a SME looking for a flexible, serviced workspace, get in touch.