What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is a workplace practice that motivates all team members to give their best every single day while contributing to overall organizational success.

Employee engagement is fostered through integrity, intentionality, and trust. When communication and commitment meet in harmony, along with these principles, employees want to show up and give their all.

What happens when employees feel distant, unmotivated, and uninspired? There is a strong correlation between staff engagement and the overall health of your company (Macleod Report).

Employee engagement matters to organizations because performance matters to organizations. Employee engagement matters to organizations because innovation matters to organizations. Employee engagement matters to organizations because employees matter to organizations.

How can we, as the people who make up organizations, take this idea of employee engagement, and look at what it means as an identity? And how can we better engage the people that we lead and work alongside?

I want us to have a moment of self-reflection here before we look at how to achieve better employee engagement? First, let’s start by asking: What motivates us each day to come to work? Is it the passion, purpose, salary? Or are you struggling to define that motivation? Before you can expect your organization to have strong employee engagement, you first have to define your ‘WHY.’ Your ‘why’ becomes the root of cultivating stronger employee engagement.

I’m walking on sunshine, woah! For some, mornings feel like the epitome of walking on sunshine. You wake up feeling motivated and ready for the day, ready for its challenges, and ready for whatever else comes your way. This is the ultimate goal for employees. As individuals, we want to be motivated and excited to enter our workspace every day. However, this isn’t the case for everyone.

Employee engagement doesn’t necessarily boil down to happiness or satisfaction. Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to an organization and its mission. This suggests that engaged employees truly care about the work that they are doing and the company for which they work. They are motivated, present, and ready to tackle daily challenges. The goal for organizations should be to increase employee engagement because it ultimately boosts the overall health of the business.

There are a few key characteristics to and benefits of employee engagement to ensure healthy employee engagement in your workspace:

Trust

Trust is the foundation for all strong teams. Without it, your organizational health will suffer. In order to ensure that your organization is striving to create an environment that cultivates trust, transparency, respect, and unity must be present. Transparency holds people accountable while proving that we all are human and make mistakes. Respect is greatly needed for employee engagement. This includes respecting your employees’ time, opinions, and ideas in the workspace. A simple way to demonstrate respect is to do what you say you will do. This means if you have a meeting at 10 am, don’t cancel 15 minutes before or show up 20 minutes late. Lastly, unity is a must. Gossip is a great divider and defeats unity. Work toward one vision with your team and create a place where trust is the priority.

Integrity and Communication

Do what you say you will do. It’s that simple.

Integrity is a fundamental value for the foundation of employee engagement. What does this look like? How would your workplace change if your leadership continually kept employees up-to-date with the struggles your organization is facing? What if your leadership provided opportunities for open communication so that employees felt heard and seen? It probably would be incredibly beneficial for your company.

The collision of integrity and effective communication only benefits your company. There will never be any loss from speaking the truth, living with integrity, and having effective communication.                                                                                

When all three of these characteristics are fully implemented in your workspace, employee’s engagement will begin to increase.

Once again:

Employee engagement matters to organizations because performance matters to organizations. Employee engagement matters to organizations because innovation matters to organizations. Employee engagement matters to organizations, because employees matter to organizations.

Your people are your greatest asset, so by investing in their well-being, you are investing in the overall health of your company.

To learn more about engaging your employees, click here!