When it comes your bottom line, employee engagement is a powerful source you must have for growth and profit. 

Employee engagement is based on trust, integrity, and a two-way commitment and communication between an organization and its people.  A strong company culture means employees are engaged.  In turn, there is:

• A reduction in regrettable turnover
• Increased productivity
• Increase in key customer retention

In part one of this three-part blog series, we'll address each attribute of a strong company culture, as well as tips on what you can do right now to lead the charge of increasing employee engagement at your own organization.

The First 30 Days: Define Employee Engagement

Google the definition of employee engagement and you’ll find an unending list of opinions and explanations. There are hundreds of interesting statistics, but they all lead to the same conclusion: employee engagement is misunderstood. It is not the same as employee satisfaction.

According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace, 85% of employees are not engaged in the workplace, and 81% of employees would consider leaving their job today. Many leaders mistakenly think that increasing employee satisfaction will increase employee motivation and engagement. But satisfaction is transactional and contractual. Satisfied employees will only put out as much effort as they are compensated for, and no more.

Employee Engagement is Not:

• Determined by how early people come to work or how late they stay to get a job done.
• Determined by how many employees you have had on staff for more than 3-5 years.
• Determined by how many people you can promote from within.

While these factors may help indicate a level of commitment to a job or a company, it’s not an indication of how engaged your people are. For example, there are lots of people who choose to stay at a company they are unhappy at because they feel they have nowhere else to go.

Identifying Employee Engagement

When looking to reduce regrettable turnover, increase revenue and productivity, as well as increase key customer retention, focus on the true definition of employee engagement. At Up Your Culture, we define employee engagement as “an emotional commitment and a willingness to give your best at work.”

Traditional 360 surveys and performance reviews don’t always provide you with the insight you truly need to understand your company’s current level of employee engagement. You need to explore how well your company collaborates, how well your company communicates, how transparent you are with your people and the opportunities for your people to grow and develop. 

As a leader, ask yourself if there are opportunities for:

• Employees to feel that the leadership communicates a vision that motivates them
• Employees to feel that the company is in a position to succeed in the next 3 years
• Employees to feel that their contributions make a positive difference

Once you know the answers to how engaged your employees are, it becomes easier to identify where you can help improve overall employee engagement. 

Company Culture and Employee Engagement Go Hand-in-Hand

In a major long-term study, companies that had the best corporate cultures, that encouraged all-around leadership initiatives and that highly appreciated their employees, customers, and owners grew 682 percent in revenue. During the same 11-year period of evaluation, companies without a thriving company culture grew only 166 percent in revenue. This shows that a thriving company culture leads to more than four times higher revenue growth.

Company culture and employee engagement go hand-in-hand, and a business focusing on employee engagement and improving their company will enjoy the benefits of increased revenue, increased productivity, and increased employee engagement. If you want to improve both employee retention and profitability, improving company culture should be one of your business priorities.

In the second part of this blog series, we’ll incorporate transparency as a way to boost overall employee engagement.