Employees make decisions and take actions every day that can make an impact on your customers, suppliers, and inside the workforce. Your culture, even more than your policies, will define what is allowed and what behaviors are rewarded.
Based on over 50 years of employee engagement research, Gallup shows that engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees -- across the industry, company size, and nationality, and in good economic times and bad. However, according to this study, only 15% of employees worldwide fall in the "engaged" category.
Gallup analyzed the differences in performance among business/work units, and they found clear benefits of employee engagement in business outcomes:
81% less absenteeism
43% less in turnover for low-turnover organizations
41% fewer defects in quality
10% higher loyalty/engagement among customers
18% higher productivity in sales
23% higher profitability
From these results, 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.
Managers' main responsibility should be to ensure that their team knows what work needs to be done (communicate the main priorities), support and advocate for them when necessary, and explain how their work connects to organizational success.
Something that Gallup corroborates in this study is the common mistake that is to approach engagement as a sporadic exercise. So these are the critical drivers that they identified in employee engagement:
Purpose. People want to know that their work has a higher purpose and that they can be part of it.
Development. People want to grow and can count on their manager to coach them to the next level.
A caring manager. People want someone who has a genuine interest in them and listens, supports, and advocates for them when needed.
On-going conversations. Gallup found that employees who received daily feedback are 3x more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less.
A focus on strengths. Focus on those skills and what makes them unique.
The most significant cause of a workplace engagement program's failure is this: Employee engagement is widely considered "an HR thing." It is not owned by leaders, expected of managers, nor understood by front-line employees.
There are no quick solutions when it comes to human connections. You need to invest time and develop them. As with any human relationship, it occurs on a daily basis. You need to be honest and show real caring. There is no manual or checklist to follow. We can only affirm that you don't know anything about what people are dealing with. So, be kind, and try to be empathic.
Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we apply this concept to how we see and treat people, we'll start to see, listen and accept people as they are. It's appreciating their differences and wanting to help them grow and become what they are capable of being.