Three Elements that Create and Sustain Employee Engagement
Employee engagement has become a hotter topic than ever in the age of The Great Resignation. Millions of employees are quitting their jobs and heading elsewhere, leaving countless organizations scrambling to retain their remaining talent and/or evaluate why their workforce is in such flux. If your org is in that boat right now, we can help you keep sailing with a look at three elements that create and sustain employee engagement:
- Organizational Culture
- Customer-Focused Processes
- Ambassadorial Behavior
Element 1: Organizational Culture
One of the hard truths about The Great Resignation is that many departing employees feel that their former organizations lacked a supportive workplace culture. Contrary to popular belief, feelings like these existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic; that event, and the stress that came with it, simply added fuel to an existing fire. Culture is fundamental to an employee’s sense of purpose and belonging, so see whether that word is cropping up in feedback from current and former workers. If it is, you should take a hard look at why employees are feeling that way, ideally with the assistance of an experience platform that can isolate actionable insights from unstructured feedback.
Element 2: Customer-Focused Processes
Another element that’s key to employee satisfaction is the chance to make a difference for customers. What this means for organizations like yours is not just giving those chances to frontline employees, but also giving other departments that aren’t customer-facing a chance to see how their work contributes to making that difference. Sharing data in this way is also handy for making customer experiences more consistent, because it gives everyone in your organization the same holistic, 360-degree view of your customer to reference.
Element 3: Ambassadorial Behavior
Improving workplace culture and refining customer processes are involved and difficult tasks. However, it’s well worth brands’ time to invest in both not just for the sake of retention, but also for creating bold, human connections with your customers that transcend individual interactions. When employees feel meaningfully supported by their organizations and that they have a chance to make a difference in customers’ lives, they won’t ‘just’ stick around—they’ll feed that passion directly into customer relationships and help you maintain an audience with unwavering brand loyalty. In this way, ensuring your employees are happy creates a feedback loop that keeps your customers happy (and keeps them from seeking out your competitors).
A Closer Look
How else can greater employee engagement improve your workplace, your brand, and your experiences? Click here to read our full-length point of view document on employee advocacy. Inveterate employee experience (EX) expert Michael Lowenstein draws on decades of research to sketch out a clear, helpful perspective on how best to advocate for your employees and meaningfully improve experiences for everyone!
