Evaluating and fostering employee engagement offers numerous benefits to organizations, serving as a critical differentiator in today’s competitive business landscape. In fact, cultivating a workforce of engaged, productive employees can be the decisive factor between gaining a competitive edge or falling behind. Recognizing this, forward-thinking companies are increasingly turning to innovative approaches like the HIGH5 strengths assessment. By identifying and leveraging employees’ unique strengths, the HIGH5 test provides a foundation for deeper engagement, enabling organizations to unlock their team’s full potential and drive sustainable success. This strengths-based approach not only enhances individual performance but also creates a more resilient, adaptable, and ultimately more competitive organization.
Many organizations find keeping tabs on employee productivity and engagement to be challenging. After all, having difficult conversations with employees and monitoring employee engagement statistics are just two elements of successfully ensuring employees remain engaged.
However, certain strategies can be implemented to make employee engagement easier to understand and improve. This article covers the factors that contribute to high levels of employee engagement and possible employee engagement initiatives your organization can begin taking.
What is employee engagement? Definition and meaning
Employee engagement is often confused with employee satisfaction. While the two terms do have some overlap, engagement is not synonymous with passion or satisfaction. Employee satisfaction focuses solely on job satisfaction and employee engagement goes a step further than that.
Employee engagement is a multifaceted measurement of your team members’ activity and involvement levels. It encompasses employees’ motivation, productivity, and commitment – emotionally, socially, and physically – to their work. Emotional commitment goes beyond mere job satisfaction; it involves employees genuinely caring about their work rather than simply performing tasks for a paycheck. To truly understand and enhance engagement, many organizations are turning to strengths-based approaches like the HIGH5 test. By identifying and leveraging individual strengths, the HIGH5 assessment helps employees align their natural talents with their roles, fostering deeper emotional connections to their work and boosting overall engagement.
Engaged individuals work towards the organization’s common goal, have deeper commitments to their job and team, and embody the organization’s core values, as well as their mission and vision statements. Interestingly, employees use discretionary effort when they are engaged, which means they are willing to go the extra mile for their organization, even without being asked.
These employees see their own success as being directly tied to the organization’s success, so they work hard to ensure both they and their team as a whole perform the best they possibly can.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Identify your team members’ top strengths using the HIGH5 test and align their tasks and responsibilities accordingly. This strengths-based approach can significantly boost emotional commitment and overall engagement. For instance, if an employee’s strength is ‘Problem Solver,’ involve them in troubleshooting projects or process improvements to increase their sense of purpose and connection to their work.
10 benefits of why employee engagement is critically important
Across the entire organization, including newly recruited associates to C-Level executives, benefits from having engaged and satisfied employees. Many organizations have huge peaks in revenue when they start to invest in their employees.
A large number of business professionals now recognize engaged employee populations do not simply correlate with success, but rather, they are the root cause of success. Additionally, some organizations thrive solely because their only competitive advantage is high team performance as a result of high engagement rates. Yet, there are even more reasons to invest in employee engagement besides the impacts on team performance.
Here are 10 benefits of employee engagement:
- Increased employee well-being, including better physical, emotional, and mental employee health
- A boost in employee happiness with their position and work product
- Improved employee satisfaction scores with their teams and organization overall
- Stricter work attendance and lowered absenteeism. Specifically, reports cite an up to 41% drop in absenteeism!
- Higher employee retention rates and reduced employee turnover
- Increase in the organizational level of loyalty and psychological safety amongst teams, meaning employees are more apt to contribute out-of-the-box ideas
- Employees provide higher quality customer service to customers
- More productive employees
- Increase in revenue of up to 20%
- Higher profit margins
Strategies and ideas for employee engagement
Every business should have a unique, tailored approach to improving its engagement with current employees. However, a few strategies are universally recognized as effective for almost any industry or organization. The following is a list of the top data-backed employee engagement strategies you can start implementing today across your organization, no matter how big or small.
Employee engagement surveys
Successful organizations consistently collect data to measure the effectiveness of their strategies and employee programs. While surveys are a helpful tool for assessing engagement goals and gathering feedback, innovative companies are going a step further by incorporating strengths assessments like the HIGH5 test. This comprehensive approach not only identifies engagement gaps but also reveals individual and team strengths that can be leveraged to boost engagement. By understanding employees’ unique strengths through the HIGH5 assessment, organizations can tailor their engagement strategies more effectively, creating a work environment where employees naturally thrive and feel more connected to their roles and the company’s mission.
Moreover, by seeking and obtaining employee feedback, organizational leaders are taking out the guesswork from what the employees want and need. You will be able to see where your team needs engagement, where your organization is excelling, and what areas need the most attention within the organization.
Recognize employees for their effort
To attract the best talent and retain a cohesive team, you will need to create a competitive and transparent compensation structure. Employees hate when their managers ignore their effort and talent and oftentimes, if employees don’t feel their work product and effort is acknowledged, they’ll find an organization that will.
Instead, try to recognize when employees go above and beyond. Let them know you see them working hard and their effort is valued at your organization. Organizational leaders can do this by showing you appreciate their effort through either financial bonuses or non-financial rewards, such as an extra paid day off,a shout-out, or even a promotion.
Promote equity, diversity, and inclusion within the workforce
Ensuring your organization is hiring diverse team members, giving everyone an equal voice, and monitoring your inclusion efforts are key elements to building long-lasting, happy, and engaged employees.
This is especially true with younger productive employees, who value when organizations include DEI as a part of their company culture. A recent report found that 83% of millennials are actively engaged if they believe they work in an inclusive workplace.
Offer career growth opportunities
Satisfied Employees are more likely to stay engaged if they understand the organization’s mission, vision, and the organizational trajectory, as well as the role they play in the organizational and team successes. This includes investing in professional employee development opportunities, offering mentorship programs, and promoting current employees after displaying their interest in the organization’s success. Investing in your employee’s future not only makes them more engaged in the present but also makes employees more interested in staying with your organization long-term.
Pros and cons of employee engagement
Status plays a key role in determining engagement rates with employees. Disengaged employees often have reasons for their disengagement, and this usually stems from dissatisfaction and apathy toward an organization’s mission.
Here are a few employee engagement ideas that target the core drivers of engagement:
Giving adequate resources and making employees comfortable
Sometimes, employees are disengaged because they do not have the right tools to work with or they simply feel uncomfortable at work. Organizational leaders need to ensure employees have access to all the materials they need. In turn, employees begin to enjoy their work more and teams will see that productivity will increase. If leaders are not meeting this need, employees may dislike their work experience and lose their drive to achieve organizational goals.
Provide fair compensation
Effective leaders understand the importance of proper employee compensation based on employee performance. Employees often feel taken advantage of if they are not paid fairly, thus leading to internal employee competition or higher turnover. When organizations compensate their workers fairly, employees are more committed to their work.
Give employees power over their futures
Employees need to have some amount of control over their future for their work to be worthwhile and meaningful. Otherwise, employees begin to feel helpless and their productivity will suffer, as they are always looking for others to take action instead of taking initiative themselves. This could include folding employees into your decision-making, allowing them to lead special projects, or offering them a spot on a DEI team because you know it’s important to them.
Understand the power of teamwork
Ensure your employees are collaborating and that everyone has access to organizational and departmental communication channels. When this happens, employees freely speak with one another and they are more motivated to achieve organizational goals. If a team is struggling with a lack of teamwork, you run the risk of tension and conflict arising and managers may have to spend more time mitigating conflict, ultimately taking their attention away from improving customer experience or removing barriers to organizational growth.
Levels of Employee Engagement
There is usually a hierarchy of employee engagement levels within a workplace. In general, employees can be classified into one of four engagement levels.
Highly engaged employees
Highly engaged employees exemplify the pinnacle of workplace enthusiasm, demonstrating a genuine enjoyment of their work and a positive outlook on their job and organization. These individuals form strong bonds with team members, exude passion and motivation, and maintain positive relationships with colleagues and managers. Their deep commitment to the organization’s success often translates into long-term loyalty. What sets these employees apart is their ability to inspire and motivate others towards a greater mission. The HIGH5 strengths assessment can play a crucial role in cultivating this level of engagement by helping employees identify and leverage their unique strengths. When individuals understand and apply their natural talents, they’re more likely to reach this highly engaged state, finding greater fulfillment in their work and positively influencing those around them.
Moderately engaged employees
A moderate engagement level indicates an employee likes their job and has moderately positive views toward their employer/manager or organization. While they like the organization, they can also be critical and see flaws clearer than highly engaged individuals. Moderately engaged employees rarely seek out additional employee experiences, meaning they may not reach their full potential. Something holds these employees back from fully committing to their jobs.
Barely engaged employees
Barely engaged employees do not have a strong opinion about their employer. In fact, they may not care for their employers at all. This type of employee goes to work mainly for the paycheck. The purpose behind such an individual’s work is to do the bare minimum to get paid, and they are not invested in the organization’s goals, mission, or vision. This engagement subcategory is often associated with high turnover rates, as barely engaged people could be researching other jobs while at work.
Disengaged employees
Disengaged employees dislike their work and employer. They do not care about the organization’s values, mission, or goals. Also, these individuals are at the highest risk of leaving the organization as they are not committed to the company at all. Likely, disengagement will occur when employees are truly ready to move on to another job opportunity or when they realize an organization is not the right fit for their lifestyle or value structure.
How to improve the engagement of employees?
No matter how engaged you may think your employees are, there is always room for improvement. First, start by optimizing your employee onboarding process. Onboarding is the first exposure to the organization and sets the first impression for their employee experience with your brand. Organizations need to ensure you make your values clear within this process.
Specifically, mention the role employees will play within the organization. Ensure employees understand what makes you unique, what makes the culture appealing, and so on so they have a reason to resonate with the company.
- Recognizing and rewarding employees is crucial for retaining top performers and boosting overall engagement. However, effective recognition goes beyond generic praise or rewards. By utilizing tools like the HIGH5 strengths assessment, leaders can tailor their appreciation to align with each employee’s unique strengths and motivations. For instance, an employee with the ‘Achiever’ strength might be more motivated by new challenges than monetary rewards. When someone goes above and beyond, acknowledge their effort in a way that resonates with their individual strengths profile. This strengths-based approach to recognition not only makes employees feel truly seen and appreciated but also reinforces the application of their natural talents, leading to sustained high performance and deeper engagement.
- Healthy workplace habits can also improve an employee’s engagement levels. Allow your employees to take breaks, as this will lead to more productivity over time. It also lets employees know you care about their well-being.
- Ensuring the office is comfortable for employees eliminates one of the top potential causes of disengagement. Employees are also more engaged when they are personally invested in their employer’s mission.
- To get your employees emotionally invested, you must first explain your values, mission, and long-term goals to your workers. Ensure that your actions as a leader align with those goals and values.
By being clear about what matters to you, employees are more likely to become enthusiastic about coming to work each day (especially if the company’s mission resonates with them).
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Use the insights from the HIGH5 test to create a ‘recognition playbook’ for your team. For each team member, note their top strengths and preferred forms of recognition. This allows you to provide meaningful, personalized appreciation that resonates deeply with each individual, enhancing the impact of your recognition efforts and boosting overall engagement.
How to measure the progress of employee engagement?
The most common way to measure employee engagement efforts is by asking your employees directly through surveys. Surveys can evaluate a number of areas including satisfaction, contribution rates, motivation, psychological safety, workplace productivity, DEI, and other factors that contribute to an organization’s overall engagement rate.
To make engagement measurements truly meaningful, organizations should adopt a comprehensive approach that goes beyond traditional surveys. While tracking survey results over time and benchmarking against competitors is valuable, integrating strengths-based assessments like the HIGH5 test can provide deeper insights into engagement dynamics. The HIGH5 assessment complements surveys by revealing employees’ natural talents and how well they’re being utilized in their roles. This combination of engagement surveys and strengths data offers a more holistic view, helping identify not just symptoms of disengagement, but also root causes and potential solutions. For instance, an employee might score low on engagement surveys, but their HIGH5 results could reveal untapped strengths that, if properly leveraged, could significantly boost their engagement. This integrated approach enables organizations to take more targeted and effective actions to enhance engagement.
To get a deeper insight into engagement, use extra effort to form 50-80 question surveys, which should cover more than just one area of engagement. Open-ended questions are a great way to gain insight into specific issues within your team. Also, consider conducting performance reviews on your employees. Coupled with the surveys, such direct reports will give you specific data on employee productivity, which can be an indicator of engagement.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Conduct Strengths-Engagement Correlation Analysis Regularly analyze the correlation between employees’ top strengths (as identified by the HIGH5 test) and their engagement scores. Look for patterns – are employees with certain strength combinations consistently more engaged? Use these insights to inform job design, team composition, and personal development plans, creating an environment where employees are more likely to be naturally engaged because they’re working in alignment with their strengths.
Business case examples of employee engagement outcomes
Many organizations experience increased sales, better customer satisfaction, and more positivity when their employees become engaged. You may be curious about the specific statistics and case studies that prove this point. Here are just a few examples of employee engagement contributing to business flourishing:
Business case 1: Increased productivity
Your employees are ultimately the key drivers for your success. When trying to find ways to improve your business, keep in mind that 92% of executives believe that an engaged employee will perform better than moderately engaged or disengaged individuals.
This boost in productivity directly contributes to higher revenue and ultimately higher profits.
Business case 2: Happier and healthier workforce
Reports continue to find that employee levels of engagement have a strong link with improved mental and physical health of employees. For example, safety incidents decreased by 70% with engaged employees. This means employees avoid physical harm and organizations avoid excessive repair costs simply by increasing engagement.
Business case 3: Less absenteeism and decreased turnover
Employees are less likely to leave your organization if they have strong positive bonds to it.
When organizations experiencing high employee turnover implement strategies to boost engagement, they report a 25% lower turnover. In turn, those organizations with low employee turnover report 65% lower turnover. Overall, addressing employee engagement, retention, and turnover will lead to organizations achieving their goals and people fulfilling their career desires.
Employee Engagement FAQ
How does employee engagement impact each employee, team, and organization’s success?
Engagement impacts not just individual employees, but it also has a major impact within departments or entire organizations. Engagement levels affect an organization’s health and overall bottom line, as well as its employees. Unfortunately, it only takes one unmotivated individual to cause other employees to adopt a similar mindset, thus stalling entire teams. Similarly, high levels of engagement can benefit organizations by raising revenue and profit levels. Additionally, high employee engagement can increase the organization’s overall competitiveness and ability to achieve its goals.
What are the disadvantages of employee engagement?
The only true disadvantage to employee engagement is that it takes time not only to evaluate employee engagement but to make changes after evaluating the data. However, looking at the long-term goals, investing in employee engagement strategies has far more benefits than potential risks.
What are some fun employee engagement activities?
There are a plethora of fun employee engagement activities you can implement with your team. Some of these activities include team-building events, employee games or competitions, recognition events or awards ceremonies, job training/professional employee development, learning lunches, or workplace parties. Employee engagement activities can be any activity that makes an employee more emotionally connected to their work and employer.
