To create a sustainable model in employee engagement: Do you think this is possible?
Before looking for the answer to this question, let’s remember the definition of sustainability: Sustainability, in its simplest definition, is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. To be able to use today’s resources without diminishing tomorrow’s resources.
Now let’s come to human resources. For more than half a century, the discipline responsible for the place of people in corporate life has been called human resources management. The management of the most valuable resource that organizations have, namely people.
Then the sustainability of human resources is as important as other resources.
How to create sustainability in employee engagement?
Human resources management is critical to creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Companies need to manage their existing human resources correctly in order to manage their relations with all stakeholders in a sustainable way.
But is it possible to create sustainability in employee engagement?
First of all, let’s recall the following determination of experts from all over the world about employee engagement: Building employee engagement is not an activity, but a part of the culture and employee experience.
Annual team meetings, bonuses given once a year, or gifts distributed on New Year’s Eve may have some benefits such as making employees happy, but none of them serve to create engagement.
The factors that will make an employee feel engaged are the factors that take place in the natural flow of daily life. The continuity of these factors is a prerequisite for sustainable employee engagement.
Let’s recall these factors, which Gallup has made a global standard and which we use in Moodivation metrics:
- Fairness
- Meaning
- Sense of Belonging
- Development
- Communication
- Work – Life Balance
- Autonomy
- Appreciation
- Team
- Well-being
- Manager
We know that each of these 11 factors is critical in building employee engagement. In organisations with high employee engagement, it is seen that efforts are made for all these factors and measures are taken quickly in the face of a deficiency / disruption/ problem experienced in any of them.
To give an example; you may think that you are a very fair organisation in every respect, but if you cannot provide your employees with the autonomy they need, a trust problem occurs.
Your employees may really find meaning and value in their work. But if your investments in their financial, mental and emotional well-being remain incomplete, there can be no talk of sustainable engagement.
Your efforts to address all of these 11 factors can be undermined by managerial behaviour. Some studies show that employees tend to change jobs that they are happy with in every aspect because of management problems.
Sustainable employee engagement refers to an experience where all these factors are handled simultaneously and sensitively.
Companies aiming for sustainable employee engagement:
- Based on the knowledge that engagement is willing participation in work, they constantly monitor the willing participation of employees.
- The excellent experience of an employee in these companies is integrated with the experiences of other employees. They show the same sensitivity when an employee starts work and when the same employee leaves work.
- Ensuring the willing participation of employees is possible by evaluating their feelings and thoughts instantly -or very frequently. It is not possible to create a unity of feelings and thoughts with the evaluations made annually, sometimes even every two or three years.
- Employee engagement is the shortest way for companies that have made sustainability the common goal of all company functions. Because it is only through high engagement rates that the desired change can be realised.
- Sustainable employee engagement is realized much faster in learning organizations with a developed feedback culture.
We can multiply these examples.
At this point, it is important for management teams to frequently remember the advantages that come with employee engagement and the losses experienced in companies where employee engagement is absent.
Here added as a note:
Benefits of employee engagement:
- Lower turnover
- Decreased burnout
- Great employee commitment
- Improved collaboration
- Safer workplaces
- Increased sales
- Better employee health
- More effective leadership
- Reduced employee stress
- Increased productivity
- Lower absenteeism
- Better customer service
- Fewer mistakes
- Higher revenue
- Stronger recruiting platform
In summary;
We are going through a period where talent management is the most important agenda of the business world. We have all heard the motto: The best customer is the existing customer. Accordingly, it would not be wrong to say that the most valuable employee for a company is the existing employee.
It is much more rational for companies to transform the potential of their employees into performance and get the best out of them compared to costly recruitment processes.
Employees in companies with high engagement rates are also become references to talent pools that will facilitate recruitment processes.
Perhaps this is the most successful state that sustainable employee engagement will reach.
Companies that are eagerly referred to by their employees, where employees who leave for one reason or another sometimes return and always act as brand ambassadors.