There are several “symptoms” of low employee engagement and trust, including: productivity decline, high turnover and declining customer satisfaction and loyalty. As an HR leader, what are some best practices in devising a plan to address these issues as they arise?
First, determine the cause
Prior to assembling a plan, you need to determine the root cause of engagement and low trust – this can be done via surveys, exit interviews and stay interviews.
Once you understand the causes, you can then put together an action plan following these best practices.
Focus
An important leadership lesson that many powerful leaders embrace, including the late Steve Jobs, is the importance of focus. For change to happen, you need to focus on a few specific areas. Therefore, when reviewing employee engagement data, focus on the three areas that will make the biggest impact to your business.
Leadership Buy In
Invest time in your leadership team to educate them on employee engagement findings and the indicators that you are seeing (they should be aware of them!). Engagement is not the sole responsibility of HR. There is no single differentiator more critical to an organization long-term than their employees– the most difficult asset for competitors to duplicate.
A significant component of your employee engagement action plan should be a communication and development plan for your leaders. Leaders must be aware of the issues–they must be held accountable and must be provided with the necessary tools to help them provide their employees with the support they need. Furthermore, your leadership team should work collaboratively with you to develop the plan as their insights will broaden your prospective and ensure that the action plan is integrated into the overall business.
Lastly, review the expectations from your leadership team to ensure that accountability for employee engagement (productivity, turnover) is a key component.
Employee Buy-In
Employee advisory committees are an excellent vehicle to build employee buy-in and participation in the identification and/or solution to identified areas of concern. They also provide a great learning opportunity for those involved. Give your employee advisers specific guidelines and then allow them to come back to you to present their ideas on how to best address the issue(s).
Research
Once the three issues to focus on are identified, in addition to employee and leadership participation in the remedies, we strongly encourage you to reach out to your network to find out what other great companies are doing. Although it is incumbent on us to design the best programs and practices for our unique business strategies, we can still learn from others.
Fast Company, Forbes and Harvard Business Review can provide some great insight on what other organizations are doing to increase engagement. Great Place to Work also has some great publications that share numerous best practices from companies that have been recognized as a great place to work. http://www.greatplacetowork.
Communicate
If low engagement is starting to negatively impact your organization, employees will most certainly be aware of this. Therefore, it is critical to be transparent on the issue. As part of your plan to improve engagement, you will need to devise a communication tool so that employees are aware of the issues identified. Furthermore, it is vital to communicate the resolution plan and to provide progress reports. These tools should be posted on the intranet for employees.
Follow up
As part of your employee engagement plan, you need to build in follow-up. Follow-up could include:
1. Monthly updates to leaders on progress made
2. Posting results and action plan with updates on the Intranet
3. CEO townhall meetings
4. Monthly updates provided to the leadership team (which can then be communicated to staff during their regular department meetings)
There are numerous studies that show the critical relationship between engagement and the bottom line. As HR leaders, we must continually use productivity tools to measure engagement and trust. It is important to remember that to truly transform your organization, one only needs to focus on 1-3 areas at a time–however, it is critical the areas addressed are those that will make the biggest impact while at the same time being transparent, collaborative and communicative throughout the process.