A recent large scale survey of business leaders identified low employee engagement as a significant obstacle to business growth
Less than 30 percent of employees are engaged, or feel a connection to their job that drives greater commitment, belonging, and productivity (at a rate of up to 200% higher than disengaged employees). Because engagement is so low, it’s an opportunity to become a prime competitive key and differentiator for your business. Your intended customer experience is strongly influenced by employee engagement. Living a culture and vision that encourages commitment and enthusiasm from your team is at the root of engagement, but how do you start to drive engagement? Here are three suggestions to begin the journey.
- Don’t assume your team knows your culture. You can’t assume your team knows your core values, definitions for success, and vision. Just as you would monitor consistent execution of a recipe in a restaurant, or steps of patient care, it’s imperative to ensure your team knows your culture. Your team can’t be motivated by a vision and values they don’t know or understand.
- Friendship is not engagement: use accurate metrics. Technology and data analytics give you a wealth of options for measuring engagement over time. Measure engagement in ways that align with your culture. At Corvirtus our vision, Our Way, gives us specific expectations for being an A-Player Teammate: Clear Direction, Superb Preparation, Unwavering Support, Positive Mindset, Citizenship, and the opportunity to Flourish. We measure these in our internal Teammate Experience Surveys and customize our customer’s surveys to fit their vision and values.
- Engagement starts with recruitment. Once you understand your culture and what’s essential for success, you need to start communicating these in recruitment. In addition to hiring assessments that screen for culture fit, interviews can explore how past work experiences were, or were not, a good fit for them, and see how this compares to your culture.
Need more suggestions for creating an intentional strong culture that grows engagement? Take a look at our Checklist for Cultural Alignment.