If you’ve worked for any amount of time on increasing your employee engagement, and want to know how to measure it, here is a good place to start.
Sometimes the best way to understand a concept is to break it down to its very essence. We will approach 5 critical signs of solid employee engagement, in a similar fashion.
The internet will give you many many definitions but the simplest way to think about it comes from Investopedia. Investopedia describes Employee Engagement as a description of how committed and enthusiastic the employees in an organization are. Engaged employees are very ‘engaged’ in the work they do and often overlook inconveniences of all sizes because they understand the impact of their work.
How engaged an employee is can be crucial to the performance of individuals, teams, departments, and the organization itself. In an ideal world, all employees are highly engaged because high engagement is directly related to morale, productivity, and overall attitude.
Realistically though, high engagement looks different every day of the week. Personal lives, big events, important milestones and so much more can affect day-to-day performance. It is therefore wiser to look elsewhere to measure the engagement and not comb through every last detail with a fine-toothed comb. Or even a wide-toothed comb. Here are 5 things to look out for within your organization or team.
5 signs Of A Solid Employee Engagement
Business Goals Are Their Goals
Your employees understand the organization’s direction and goals and know how they directly contribute to them. For any employee to be in-tune with business goals, they must first know the business goals, and secondly, understand how the work they do contributes to it.
They Go The Extra Mile
When employees understand why the work they do is important, when they understand the value of their work, they are willing to go above and beyond to make sure it is done right. People assume going the extra mile means working an extra hour, but it could also mean taking the time to build a less stressful work environment, a better communication system or even putting in the hours to educate themselves or their teammates.
If your employees go the extra mile often, rest assured you’ve done something right.
They Are Collaborative
To understand how an employee’s role fits into the big picture, they must also understand how everyone else’s role fits into it as well. Maybe not the details of it, but enough to value a colleague’s work, no matter how big or small.
And because they understand how their colleagues contribute to the business goals, and therefore their own goals, they collaborate with other people and teams a lot more easily.
They Communicate Well
Equipped with the knowledge of everyone’s roles and the overall direction, engaged employees are the kind of people that communicate well. They know what information they need, they know the direction to go in to fill in a particular gap, they know who might be a good choice in a sticky situation, and they know when to reach out for help.
Engaged employees are low maintenance, and the kind of people leaders need to worry about the least.
They Are Your Ambassadors
As a person with a positive experience, in a supportive work environment, whose value is seen and whose contributions are recognized, your employees are bound to look for opportunities in every nook and corner. Opportunities to scout people, talk about how good the organization is, business opportunities and networking opportunities are all opportunities to speak about the wonderful place they work at and bring one more person on board.
These signs are, at the end of the day, naught but signs. The essence of solid employee engagement lies in making employees feel like the 40 hours they put in for the organization are not in vain. The foundation of that is rooted in a good employee experience, but the fruits a good employee engagement bears may look slightly different from the ones we’ve described above.
If you would like to read more about Employee Experience and how it can drastically increase your ROI, check out this post, and if you want a tool that can help you reach your Ex goals, check out this review of Zircly.