Creating an Employee Engagement Strategy That Drives Real Results

​Most businesses today understand the importance of having employees who feel engaged at work, and appreciated by their bosses. Yet, not everyone has a strategy in place to make sure that occurs.
 
The U.S. Labor market is doing well, and unemployment is down, which means that top talent is harder to come by, and easier to lose. That makes it quintessential that companies implement an employee engagement strategy to ensure that they retain their most valuable employees.
 
Unfortunately, there is no easy copy and paste strategy that will work for all companies- every culture is unique, and various industry professionals value different offerings. Yet, there are some initial steps your company can take that will jump-start your engagement strategy plan.
 
Use Surveys
One of the easiest ways to figure out what areas of employee engagement your company needs to work on is by simply asking your employees. You can conduct the surveys with a questionnaire, online, or with a consulting firm- the method is less important than the questions.
 
On this survey you want to make sure you’re asking your employees how they feel about their current career development options, financial rewards, job recognition, job characteristics, and work-life balance. Of course you can also include questions about overall satisfaction, and the general office culture.
 
Take Ownership
Oftentimes, companies see that there is space to improve employee engagement, but they are not organized enough to see these changes through to fruition. It is crucial that when making a strategy for employee engagement that one person or one team takes ownership. This could be a member of the C-suite, a member of the HR team, or it could simply be an employee that is dubbed the “Culture Officer.” It matters less who it is that is chosen, and more that there is a specific person or team that will analyze the problem, implement changes, and track further feedback going forward.
 
Make Changes
The last step of the process is actually setting up concrete changes in response to the feedback received from employees. Employees don’t just want their grievances heard they want to see the problems fixed.
 
Fixing the problem could be as small as providing more feedback and communication, or initiating more office wide social events. It could also involve some more heavy lifting like creating a health and wellness program, or changing the telecommuting policy to allow for more work-life balance. Finding a solution that works for your company, and actually putting in the effort to implement real changes will absolutely improve employee engagement, and ultimately improve retention.