Employee engagement a challenge to employers

Many employers still find a challenge engaging their employees fully in the workings of the organisations they run.

Harris Interactive, a market research firm, in a recent employee engagement survey covering 23,000 employees in the US, found out that only 37% of them were fully engaged by their organisations.

"What this means in simple terms is, out of the 23,000 employees, only 37% understood their employers' vision, goals, strategy, brand promise, target market, their role in achieving this and were actually doing what they were supposed to do to help their organisations reach those targets," Joan Nakaye an HR consultant, says.

As a result, you find many employees in organisations in a state you would call ROAD (Retired On Active Duty), Nakaye notes. This not only compromises the ability of employees to perform, but also makes them disinterested in what is going on at their workplaces.

What causes this?
With the focus of most employers being getting new employees off the ground running and producing results, they miss out on communicating precisely and making employees understand what an organisation is all about.

"The result is having employees who are just going through the motions day in, day out," says Isaac Lukwago, a workplace counsellor.

Even when employees understand what an organisation is all about, you still find quite a number of them who do not know how what they do fits into the big picture. From the survey quoted above, it was discovered that only 20% of employees saw a direct link between their job and the goals of the employer.

Communication about the direction of the organisation in some cases is done effectively, employees even know how they can add value to their organisation through their input, but they just do not care.

Lukwago says: "this attitude is usually in response to the way employers treat their employees. When employees feel like their employers do not care about them, they will not care about the organisations of their employers too."

Managers often times too lack ideas on how to create a conducive working environment to engage employees and are not willing to go the extra mile to
motivate and engage their employees, thus facilitating this disconnect.

Ignoring bad behaviour and poor performance among employees also lowers morale and input, especially from well-behaved employees and top performers.

"This is because they do not see any reason to be exceptional as they are treated the same way as poor performers and indisciplined employees," Lukwago says.

Besides performance and workplace behaviour, a general lack of appreciation for the small milestones, sacrifices made by employees and anything else beyond their basic job description and targets will get employees disengaged and demotivated over time.

Way Forward
Begin with self-assessment as the employer or owner and your top management. How much are you giving to the organisation in terms of time, attention and  engagement with them? What investment are you making in your employees?

With that answered, you will have good ground on which to begin fixing the problem, Nakaye advises.

You can then proceed and engage your managers more, raising the ones who are already highly engaged with employees on a pedestal, so that they can be models for the rest to follow.

The next step is to set aside time and space to specifically share with the employees the direction of the company in detail, in terms of vision, goals, strategy, target market and all related issues.

Nakaye says this is key to make sure this engagement is interactive so that employees, too, can give feedback and feel part of the entire process.

When new employees join the company, besides teaching them how to be productive, they must be engaged on what direction the organisation is taking, how to play a part in getting there and why they should be a part of this. Preferably, this should come before they are even introduced to targets and how to achieve them,  she suggests.

Continuously rewarding good behaviour and performance will also help keep employees who are highly engaged, focused and giving more to the organisation, motivated.

Nakaye advises that this should go hand-inhand with continuously responding to employee concerns and recreating a conducive environment for them to stay engaged and productive.

Finally, making these changes permanent, with routine review and improvement, will result in improving employee engagement levels and increased productivity with time.