Does employee engagement really drive productivity?

A guest blog from Nicky Buckley, East Midlands HR

Let’s think about what employee engagement means to you. Do your employees appear to enjoy the work they do, they have friends at work and have a nice office environment (or work from home), you put on some fun events, and they get treats on a Friday, and you think they are not looking to leave anytime soon.  But what about work engagement? Do your employees deliver on their core tasks, support others, are involved in discussions around improvements, processes and deliver results for your business?

There is an argument engaged employees drive performance, but that it is also a 2-way program for the employer and employee, with reduced absence and turnover to wellbeing being points to consider, more so with an increase in burnout and additional workloads with poor retention and absence.

Benefits to employee engagement

According to research carried out by the CIPD, there are several work-related outcomes: absenteeism, job satisfaction, job involvement, performance, turnover and wellbeing.

Activities for employee engagement

Pizza, cakes, chocolates have all been popular but is this what your employees want from engagement? Probably not the best wellness treats around. There are several tools that could be used, although this list is not exhaustive, a combination of activities would work best for a holistic approach:

• Use an engagement platform
• Do an engagement survey
• Clear salary expectations & benefits
• 1-2-1 programmes
• Q & A with the boss
• Employee of the month
• Celebration events
• Volunteering or charity events
• Development and learning opportunities
• Appreciation or welcome to the company gifts
• Flexible working
• Environmental projects
• Management styles

 The engagement survey

The survey would be our top tip of where to start, or measure against previous surveys if you have completed one previously. It should be well communicated why you are doing the survey; it should be easy to complete and be anonymous. Think about how many questions you want to have, divisions for grouped results. The results should be easy to get your analysis together, provide feedback to all employees and help you put an action plan together.

Benefits and pay

There will be an element of engagement where you need to consider pay rates and other ‘perks’ you offer. With an increase to national minimum wage, cost of living, these have never been so more relevant.

Employee engagement plan

You’ve got your results, can see where you have scored not so well and need to make some changes. Involve employees, making sure employees have their ‘Employee Voice’ to say what they would like to see happen, understand why they answered the way they did, however, also being clear if things are too costly. Consider some KPI's you could introduce to measure the changes.

Citation Notes:

Gifford, J. and Young, J. (2021) Employee engagement: definitions, measures and outcomes. Discussion report. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

Nicky is an HR Consultant with over 14 years HR generalist & 10 years operational management experience in logistics/FMCG/retail. She is CIPD Qualified and a CIPD Northants Branch committee member. She can provide you with support to create a people plan to give you a strategy aligned to your company vision, support you to develop a performance management programme, complete a legal compliance audit, fully managed recruitment and provide a HR information system.

Get in touch with Nicky for any HR issues you are facing: eastmidlandshr.com