Growing RMR With Employee Engagement | AG Weekly

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What Is An Employee Engagement Program?

An employee engagement program is a program designed to create the right motivation and atmosphere in order to help an employee be committed and give their best towards reaching the organization's goal.

What Is The Goal Of An Employee Engagement Program?

The goal of an engagement program is to maximize the time that an employee spends at work and help them be prepared to give their all while they're at work so they can go home and enjoy their life and do their hobbies and come back and deliver a great result.

What Are Some Examples Of Employee Engagement?

There are many ways that a company can engage their employees. A few examples are to not skip on onboarding, ensure that employees know what the goals and values of the company are, each of which work to allow employees to really buy into what they're accomplishing each day.

A way to ensure that onboarding is done correctly is to make sure employees feel like they know their purpose, they know their role, they know who they can reach out to for questions or concerns, and they have the proper logins or information that they need. That way, they don't feel lost in the shuffle.

Making sure that their manager or supervisor shares the full detail of what they'll be doing will help them retain all that information and then, while they're doing their job they can feel empowered and feel like they're in charge of what they're doing.

Ensuring that employees are properly trained will also allow the manager to not have to feel like they have to micromanage or be involved in the details of each assignment.

How Do You Measure Engagement?

There are a lot of KPIs that can be used in order to measure employee engagement. Net Promoter Scores, employee surveys, and turnover rates. For any given business, it's really a matter of deciding which of those apply to you and to find the best way to utilize those KPIs

I think a great example of a KPI that can be used to measure employee engagement would be turnover, specifically within the first 90 days. We tend to see a lot of turnover in that time period, so if you're trying to improve your onboarding or your training you would want to measure that data to gauge retention. From before the time that you start utilizing those programs and then afterwards to ensure that that engagement is there and that you're able to retain those employees past the 90 days, and if you're able to capture that engagement from the get go you're definitely more likely to retain that employee.

Why Is Engagement Important?

An employee engagement program can help reduce turnover. By helping employees feel like they're gaining more knowledge at work and having more training or development programs and allowing them to learn new skills that get them excited about their job really help. Sometimes information or employees knowledge can become stagnant and it's important to help them continue to develop. That can definitely reduce turnover because if they're gaining more knowledge, it will reengage them in their work.

Can You Give An Example?

I think a specific example that has allowed me to see the importance of employee engagement is with team members that have stayed or been with the company for years and have remained in the same role. Although these employees can do a fine job and perform at adequate levels, allowing them to learn a new skill or gain a new responsibility really helps these particular employees reengage and reignite that passion or fire for their job.

How Should A Company Get Started?

I think starting an employee engagement program can sound really daunting and like a lot of work in the beginning, especially for a smaller size company versus a large one with more resources. I think the most important thing that a company can do is to figure out the values and goals that they want to promote in that employee engagement program. And once they have those, they can use knowledge or data that they have within their records. Things to know in advance, obviously, are going to be higher dates and separation dates, and it's a matter of calculating turnover by putting those in an Excel spreadsheet. or other program

What Should Businesses Keep In Mind?

Employee engagement programs are wildly successful if done correctly and accepted by employees. I think it's important for all of us to feel valued appreciated at work and feel like we're accomplishing something. If management's able to translate that by keeping employees engaged, we'll all be more successful as a team. If employees do feel engaged at work it also helps reduce turnover rates. The cost of replacing an employee is 200 percent of an employee's annual salary. That's a large amount of financial cost, and if we're able to help an employee stay and work harder, it will help us have less interruption in the workflow processes as well as lessen the burden of financial cost to the company. I addition, I think you can definitely notice the difference between employees that are engaged within the company when you walk into the door versus the ones that aren't. I think that's definitely something worth having in a company.