Why You Need To Care About Employee Engagement
Publié le 22 October 2021
As a company leader, there are clear reasons why you need to care about employee engagement, as it has multiple benefits for employees and employers alike.
What Is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a concept and measurement of how much employees feel connected with their job. This can be a complicated concept that takes multiple factors in consideration, such as the satisfaction from their daily tasks, positive relationships with colleagues, feeling of recognition, and an overall sense of accomplishment and achievement in the workplace.
Why Is Employee Engagement Important?
Employee engagement is important because it directly affects how employees perform their job responsibilities and tasks. Engagement also plays an important role in the overall atmosphere and culture of the workplace. Employees who are engaged in their job will be more likely to collaborate and support each other in order to overcome any business-related challenges, and less likely to experience negative feelings related to boredom, burnout and fatigue.
Can Remote Employees Be Engaged?
Improving employee engagement faces a serious challenge with the rise of remote work and work from home job roles. Although these types of jobs have been growing more common over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the speed at which companies had to adapt to remote working arrangements. While remote working has many health, safety and well-being benefits, it is not without its drawbacks. As the number of people working from home increased, so did feelings of loneliness, isolation and loss of work-life balance.
Remote work makes it a challenge to keep employees engaged, as the physical separation and distance makes it much more difficult to feel connected to the workplace and with colleagues. Ensuring that remote workers feel as engaged as possible remains a primary concern for company leaders adapting to new modes of work in the wake of the pandemic.
Why You Need To Care About Employee Engagement
Business leaders and managers need to care about employee engagement because engaged employees are:
- Happier
- Healthier
- Effective
- Supportive
Happier
Having happy and satisfied employees should be a major goal of every business and organization. Not only is it the right thing to do, but the numbers support the positive impact of employee happiness. Multiple studies find that employees who are happy at work are 12% more productive, twice as committed to their tasks and stay in their job roles 4x longer. There is a difference between being happy at work and being engaged in the work itself, so one is not entirely dependent on the other. Nevertheless, there is a link between employee engagement and feeling satisfied and content in their roles.
Employees who are actively engaged in their work are far more likely to feel satisfied with their career. Career satisfaction is part of maintaining a proper work-life balance. When people feel good about the state of their careers, it means that there is less of a chance they will experience career stress and anxiety that can easily carry over into their personal time.
Healthier
Employee engagement can have a real effect on the health and physical well-being of employees. Employees who do not feel engaged in their work can be experiencing one of the signs of employee burnout. This can have serious negative consequences, such as higher levels of stress and anxiety, which is linked to adverse physical effects including increased chance of heart attacks, strokes and related serious cardiovascular issues.
Strong employee engagement can help improve worker health and well-being because it is a sign of a healthy work-life balance. Employees who are experiencing burnout due to overwork are less likely to engage in their work tasks because they do not have the emotional energy to do so. This is one of the reasons why employee burnout is bad for businesses, in addition to being incredibly detrimental to employee health. Properly engaged employees will be able to step away from work tasks once the day is complete, hopefully enjoying a mental separation between their work and personal lives.
Effective
Organizations expect employees to complete their tasks on-time, correctly, and as effectively as possible. Employee engagement is one of the key components of efficiency in the workplace. In this case, employees who are engaged in their job role, responsibilities and tasks approach them with a great deal of focus. By fully engaging in the tasks at hand, employees will examine every element from planning, execution and follow through. They are more likely to notice important details that could help their work stand out, and make a difference when trying to achieve key business objectives.
Recognizing employee achievement is one way to demonstrate the effectiveness of employee engagement. Due to the fact that they are actively engaged in their roles and responsibilities, they know that producing the best work possible is beneficial to the organization, to their colleagues and to their professional future in the form of career growth and recognition.
Supportive
One of the keys to a good workplace is making collaboration and support a pillar of company culture. When employees are encouraged to work together, build professional connections and support one another it leads to a happier and better working environment. Employee engagement is necessary for effective collaborations, as it requires that all employees have a good working knowledge of ongoing projects and tasks.
One way to improve employee engagement and encourage support between colleagues is by ensuring every employee has a strong understanding of ongoing tasks and projects. By making sure that they know the major goals for a company, the smaller steps required to reach them and understand their own important role in this process, employees will be more likely to reach out and find ways to support each other.
It should be the goal of every workplace, virtual or otherwise, to have employees who are actively engaged in their roles, tasks and responsibilities. In this type of environment, employees will be happier, healthier, more effective and more supportive of each other. For all these benefits, it is obvious why you need to care about employee engagement.
