I once changed an employee culture from the bottom up, I took on a new role and it became clear very quickly that the culture in the team was broken, absolutely on the floor, there was no trust in their employer, their Leadership team or each other. There was little point talking about a Business sales plan until it was fixed. I started with asking the team what is they want from their employer, their Manager and each other over the next 12 months. What were their hopes and fears? It was only 3 questions and as their Manager I answered the same 3 questions. It took 2 hours to come up with a set of values, some actions on both sides where we could hold each other to account and a glimmer of hope that there was a future for everyone.
The route to employee engagement can depend on many things, but it is not as difficult as you may think to solve. The first 3 questions you should ask:-
- What does employee engagement mean? (get this from your’s and your employee’s perspective)
- How do you know if people are engaged?
- What does employee engagement mean for your customers?
Signs that you do not have an engaged workforce:
- Customer complaints – disengagement leads to poor customer feedback
- Internal team conflict
- High absence levels
- High employee attrition rates
- High employee relation issues
- Low attendance at employee events
- You can feel it, you can hear it and you can see it
If you want to measure engagement with a survey remember:
- Employees hate filling out surveys just get onto TikTok for that feedback!
- Keep it simple if you want to ask questions through a survey go for the minimum amount. Don’t ask for the feedback if you do not want to hear it or do anything about it. Don’t ask for feedback that is irrelevant to your employees
- Everyone in the organisation needs to own the survey and it’s results
- Follow everything up. If you do not follow up on the feedback and address the issues and make changes you will cause further disengagement
- Fix all of the problems not just the ones which are easy to. Pizza and doughnuts mean nothing if you fail to listen to the real concerns of your people.
Getting off to a good start:
- Start with a top led people engagement strategy that supports your business goals and sets your intentions. If you are genuinely invested in then say how.
- Decide how to gather feedback with your workforce. Ask your employees? How do they want to feedback to you?
- Gain employee’s trust from the start that you are taking it seriously (this is your why ?)
- Make it quick and get some early wins.
