Employee engagement and financial performance are connected

Most companies claim they want enthusiastic, engaged employees - and with good reason. Employee engagement and financial performance are connected. A recent study by Aon Hewitt, for example, found that companies with high levels of engagement outperformed the stock market in 2010.

And yet Gallup research indicates that more than 70 percent of employees in the typical company are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.”

What’s the reason for this failure? In my view, it boils down to a startling disconnect between how companies try to promote engagement and what truly inspires and motivates employees.

Conventional approaches to employee engagement tend to focus on overall workplace improvements and benefits because those things can be directed by staff from the center. They’re the “easy” things to do. Obviously, they’re important: A safe and pleasant work environment, fair compensation, and the tools needed to do the job are table stakes for employee satisfaction.

But what you really want isn’t just satisfied employees, it’s passionate employees - people who love working for your company, love your products and services, and love wowing customers.

8 employee engagement resources you may have missed:

• 20 tips to improve employee engagement and performance - High levels of employee engagement in an organization are linked to superior business performance, including increased profitability, productivity, employee retention, customer metrics and safety levels
• 10 key lessons from culture change - Too many organisations go about the wrong way in creating corporate culture change
• 5 key elements in shaping company culture - What does it take to create the right kind of culture? How can you maintain that culture?
• Having a purpose beyond profit - This may come as a shock but most employees do not leap out of bed in the morning excited by the prospect of making more profit for their organization that day
• Value statements can be real business drivers - Values can be made to work when they are a genuine part of a company’s culture
• Use storytelling to communicate your company’s values - Storytelling can be a powerful tool when you want to communicate your company’s values
• Improving performance through transparency - By sharing numbers with employees, not just executives, you can increase employees’ sense of ownership
• Connect employee goals to larger company goals - For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions

Source: Dilbert

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