Tackling the challenges of employee engagement

Citation

Snell, A. (2009), "Tackling the challenges of employee engagement", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2009.37208baa.002

Tackling the challenges of employee engagement

Article Type: Strategic commentary From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 8, Issue 2

Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its direction for the future

Alice SnellVice president of Taleo Research, a division of Taleo.

Most organizations realize that the most productive employees are those who are intellectually and emotionally bound to their employer. Engaged employees go beyond the confines of their job description, conscious of how their roles drive the business towards its objectives. The strongest driver in achieving this is a sense of feeling valued and involved. It can be argued that HR departments are tasked with facilitating the commitment, loyalty and passion within employees and new candidates necessary to get them fully onboard and to build their motivation. This is what makes the difference in a working environment, however, achieving high levels of employee engagement is becoming increasingly challenging.

The average time spent in any position is two years (Reed Consulting, 2007). This frequency in new jobs is causing employees to be reluctant to engage in roles and to contribute to workplace culture. As the next generation of workers joins the workplace, this too complicates engagement as these workers bring new demands on how and where they want to work. Indeed, as organizations globalize and become further dependent on technology and virtual working environments increase, so do the issues associated with engagement. Greater emphasis is put on connecting and engaging with a dispersed workforce.

In contrast, the rise of the Internet has also brought more visibility to alternative employment outside of the organization. Online recruiters, job boards, career sites and salary checkers increase awareness of what competitors are offering, providing a constant tease to employees. Too often organizations are better at making external opportunities more visible than those internally. However, despite the threat that technology brings, the following are examples of how it can be used by organizations, along with talent management processes, to improve employee engagement:

1. Recruit and onboard the right people

In a market short of skills, the ability to quickly get the right people into your workforce is increasingly important. Having secured their services, the next stage, onboarding, is crucial in shaping their view. New employees decide whether they feel at home or not in the first three weeks in a company and 4 percent of new employees leave a job after a disastrous first day, and considering that losing an employee in their first year is estimated to cost as much as three times their salary, there is a strong financial incentive for businesses to get it right (The Wynhurst Group LLC, 2007). In short, the quicker an employee gets up to speed, and engages with the corporate culture, the sooner he or she can begin contributing to the bottom line – regardless of role or department.

2. Proactively drive internal mobility

Research from Reed Consulting states that the top reason people leave a company is a limited career path and a lack of development opportunities. To keep your top talent, advertising of internal job vacancies is crucial when combating the “grass is greener” threat. However, HR professionals shouldn’t solely rely on this approach. Talent management systems can match current employees to open roles across the organization based on skills, aspirations and performance, thus enabling the employer to proactively offer new roles to appropriate employees.

3. Improve the line manager’s ability to manage

The relationship between manager and employee is key to ensuring engagement on a daily basis. Ultimately there is no replacement for a good manager, but modern systems can provide managers with relevant employee data that can be used to support their decision-making and improve their knowledge of staff strengths and weaknesses. For instance, context-based analytics allow managers to look at tasks and track how each employee is currently performing against their development goals. This every day interaction provides fact-based tools for decision-making to complement traditional management techniques.

4. Empower employees to manage their own careers

A key factor in engaging employees is providing them with the knowledge and power to make their own decisions and manage their own careers. This means giving staff a clear line of sight of how they are helping the organization achieve its objectives. Another consideration is self-service career planning tools that help employees define a career path specific to their goals and that of the organization. An example of this is supplying employees with actual career histories that show how others have progressed, rather than a list of desired skills and abilities. Finally, feedback is vital in understanding contribution and should be captured regularly from a broad, yet relevant audience. This information can also be used to monitor employees’ suitability for alternative roles internally.

In today’s climate, with a more challenging and competitive market, companies need to look beyond salaries and find other ways to differentiate themselves from competitors when competing for top talent and retaining their current crop of skilled workers. Innovative benefits and a clear line of sight to career goals are fundamental in engaging workers. HR professionals should acknowledge this, adopting and exploiting new techniques to increase engagement and supporting the business processes with key talent management practices and technology platforms.

About the author

Alice Snell is vice president of Taleo Research, a division of Taleo, which delivers on demand talent management solutions to companies world-wide. She has been tracking and analyzing the intersection between technology and talent management for more than a decade and has authored numerous articles and reports on talent management technology and processes. Prior to joining Taleo, she was a senior analyst at Kennedy Information. Alice Snell can be contacted at: asnell@taleo.com