Engaged employees are those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. To create an environment where people flourish, employers need to understand what it means to be an engaged employee and how to manage people for engagement in their workforce.

Employee engagement is about individual and organisational performance. Employees who are engaged based on key workplace elements predict important organisational performance outcomes.

• Engaged employees are involved in and enthusiastic about their work.
• Those who are not engaged are unattached to their work and organisation. They are ‘checked out’.
• The actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work, they are resentful and potentially undermine what engaged co-workers might accomplish.

According to statistics in 2017,

33%

US employees were engaged in their work and workplace. This is the highest number in Gallup’s 15+ years of tracking employee engagement. But it’s not quite cause for celebration.

51%

Which is the majority of employees, are not engaged and haven’t been for some time.

16%

Of employees actively disengaged looking to potentially undermine organisational results.

10 Reasons Employee Engagement is Absolutely Necessary in 2022.

1.Happiness

When your employees are engaged, they don’t just become happier. They become better performers. Organisations falter in creating a culture of engagement when they solely approach engagement as an exercise in making their employees feel happy.

It is true that engaged employees feel better about their work and workplace but simply measuring satisfaction and catering to their wants often fails to achieve the underlying goal of employee engagement which has improved outcomes.

2.Satisfaction

Although the concept of employee engagement and job satisfaction are interrelated, they are not synonymous. Satisfaction is about employees being happy with their job or organisation. Satisfaction is an attitude like organisational loyalty or pride.

Engagement is about the employee being actively invested in their work and the value they add to the organisation. Engagement predicts satisfaction as well as many other concrete organisational results.

3.Engagement

When employees are engaged they become emotionally attached to their work and workplace. As a result, their individual performance soars, and they propel their team and organisation to improved outcomes such as higher level of productivity, safety and quality. Engaged employees make it a point to show up for work and do more work.

41%

Reduction in absenteeism is realised by highly engaged organisations

17%

Increase in productivity is released in highly engaged organisations.

24%

Lower turnover is achieved by highly engaged business units. Engaged workers are also more likely to stay with their employers in high turnover organisations.

70%

Decrease in employee safety incidents is realised in highly engaged business units. Engaged workers are more mindful of their surroundings. They are aware of safety procedures and diligent about keeping their coworkers and customers protected.

40%

Reduction in quality defects is experienced in highly engaged employees. Engaged workers care more about the products and services they deliver to customers and the overall performance of their organisations.

21%

Greater profitability results in highly engaged business units.

4.Loyalty 

Loyalty can be defined as being faithful to an institution or employer. Loyalty is a reciprocal exchange between organisations and their workers. Employee engagement improves loyalty in many ways in an organisation. Employees are more loyal when other employees like their managers are humble, reserved and trustworthy.

Related both to engagement and loyalty is the concept of organisational citizenship behaviour occurs when an employee acts in a way that improves the psychological well-being and social environment of an organisation. 

Work attitudes, engagement, loyalty and citizenship are all factors that can influence decisions to remain with, or leave an organisation. Ultimately they are reflected in employee retention and turnover statistics.

5.Motivation 

The concept of employee engagement is relatively new but it closely is linked with the concept of motivation, which is well established. An engaged employee is one who is motivated and committed to achieving results that advance organisational goals and work group objectives in meaningful ways.

A basic strategy is to treat employees in a one-size-fits-all way, or to assume that all employees are similarly motivated and are apt to be ineffective. A bit more sophistication is needed. Motivation is about the drive or energy, an interstate that compels people to act with energy and persistence towards goals. The question is which factors affect this energy?

• Theories 

Some theories focus on factors inherent to individuals such as their basic needs for survival, achievement, appreciation and belonging or development as well as their energy level and mental state, like their energy to pursue different tasks.

• Needs 

This ‘needs perspective’ of motivation is a hierarchy of needs of basic drives around survival, safety, belongings, self-esteem, self-actualisation.

Other theories examine components relating to the external circumstances in which people find themselves. Such as the effects of job goals, salary, work obstructions, supervision, and leadership which also influence motivation.

HR management is involved in shaping many of these areas, not only through compensation but also through job design and even through selection that addresses factors inherent to individuals.

• Engagement 

 A paradox of employee engagement is that well the public sector lacks financial inducements comparable to those available in the private sector. Research suggests that money alone is not sufficient to ensure higher levels of engagement and motivation.

Rather managing engagement in the public sector requires a mix of selection, feedback, achievement, recognition, and growth opportunity.

6.Empowerment

Whether you know it or not, a company’s bottom line depends on the satisfaction and happiness of your employees. Increased satisfaction and happiness always leads to better retention. People will stay where they feel the most joy.

The truth is labor resources still represent one of the most critical elements for a successful company. You will end up spending a lot more time, energy and money trying to recruit the right talent if you cannot convince those with desired talents and skills to stay in your organisation.

Many employees today are looking for much more than a paycheck. They want to do something meaningful and get rewarded. They want to be empowered, share a sense of belonging and see a viable and visible career path ahead. Salaries are nice but true employee engagement gives us a deeper connection between the place in which one works and the values, motivations, goals and interests that one personally holds.

Employee engagement right from the start can produce significant benefits for your company which can then translate to increased productivity and significant cost savings. When people are engaged they tend to produce better work than when they are distracted.

Engaged employees show up more consistently instead of finding ways to be absent from the office. Their improved customer service boosts overall output and revenue.

7.Meaningfulness

Improved engagement provides a sense of meaningfulness, a sense of connection, and a sense of growth. When the workplace is organised in such a way as to create a sense of meaningfulness, a sense of connection, and the sense of growth, employee engagement grows. This leads to high motivation and high organisational performance.

A sense of meaningfulness means the people feel that they’re working toward something important. When employees have a chance to accomplish something to provide real value, they feel a sense of meaningfulness. Good managers and colleagues help people understand the purpose of their work, which contributes to feelings of pride and dignity.

8.Connection and Growth

With a sense of connection people feel connected to the organisation, to one another. In a survey, asking people what factors contribute to their engagement, 79% of people said that good work relationships with co-workers drove engagement to a high or very high extent.

The behaviour of managers makes the biggest difference in whether or not people feel engaged at work. Managers promote engagement when they listen to employees, genuinely care about their concerns and help them develop positive relationships.

People feel a sense of growth when they have a chance to learn, grow and advance. To be fully engaged people need not only to feel they are competent and handle what is asked of them, but also that they have the chance to learn and expand their potential.

Engaged employees help each other understand their own unique sense of talents, skills, interest, attitudes and needs, put people in jobs where they can make their best contribution and receive intrinsic rewards everyday. They make sure people have what they need to perform well.

In addition they give people to work on challenging projects, offer high quality training and learning programs and provide opportunities and advancement in the organisation.

9.Productivity 

Employee engagement is garnering much more attention than it has before. Especially, as it relates to leading and managing today’s multigenerational workforces in this much more disruptive global business environment that we all are part of today.

In the 2017 KPMG CEO Outlook Report, 65% of the CEOs now see change and disruption as an opportunity as opposed to a threat. 74% claim that they will be investing more heavily in time and resources in improving culture and employee engagement to continue to complete and achieve winning results in their marketplace.

In the 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, CEOs and senior executives and leaders and managers from all over the world from different types of organisations that were surveyed cited the areas of culture, engagement, and employee retention as urgent.

Another key data point that came from that survey was that today’s workforce, especially the younger generations cares deeply about the culture, the workplace environment, vision, purpose and the ‘whys’ of the organisation they seek to join.

Actively engaged employees are actually working against the organisation, especially during times of change, growth, and transformation. But therein lies the opportunity, that most of the disengaged employees are sometimes hard to identify. They are relatively happy in their roles but they do their bare minimum, they clock in and clock out

When leaders and managers learn how to better define culture, and prioritise employee engagement, they can transform a huge portion of disengaged employees into actively engaged employees who will help continue to drive the organisation forward and achieve winning results.

10.Contribution and Fun

We all want to be doing something significant with our lives and have those efforts recognized. Studies show employees are happiest when they know they are making a difference and helping others. Often their contributions go unnoticed. Metrics for measuring an employee’s contribution should shift from measuring their individual performance to measuring their team’s performance.

Employee engagement helps your direct reports feel they are contributing something meaningful by engaging and sharing a client story that shows them the difference they have made in someone’s life. Employee engagement helps to recognize and publicly celebrate their accomplishments as often as possible.

If work isn’t fun, your employees will eventually burn out. Companies like Apple and Google have taken the lead into turning their organisations into workplaces that encourage employee engagement which eventually encourage freedom and fun. 

Making your workplace fun will raise your employee’s morale and energy and is the key to stimulating their creativity and innovation. It will also help decrease stress and turnover, as well as strengthen the relationships of all of your employees. Make your workplace a lot more fun by gathering your team together for a 30-minute brainstorming session, then voting and implementing 3-4 fun new ideas.

Tips to Improve Employee Engagement at Work in 2022.

• Let Them Do What They Want

Instead of just making people do certain tasks, ask them what they would rather do and then let them do it. The idea is that rather than letting people wallow in these tasks that are making them miserable, you give them the option of choosing what they want to do.

• Focus On Engaging Managers.

We know that moods are contagious. So if you have very motivated managers, it’s very likely that mindset will trickle down to the teams that they manage. Put a focus on engaging your managers making them happy because we know that unhappy employees leave companies most often because of their managers. So if you fix this problem, a lot of other problems will get automatically fixed.

• Communicate Your Mission.

Ask CEOs why they are doing what they do, what gets them out of the bed in the morning, what is their mission and tell the rest of the team, what their mission is. Get them on board and then everyone’s on that same boat driving it towards that same goal.

• Volunteer Work

When we are working in businesses, very often we feel like we are just slogging towards profit so rather than making employees feel like their only job in this world is to line the pockets of the shareholders. Show them that there’s some other greater good that they can be working on.

• Take Care of Them

Let’s be honest, if an employee doesn’t have their needs covered, there’s no way that they will be able to engage at work. That means taking care of their health or their wealth, making sure that they have enough pay to be able to support themselves wherever they are.