Of late, we have been seeing employee engagement as a trend for business excellence. A lot of initiatives are taken by the HR and Management, across various organizations from car dealerships to hotels and even hospitals to increase their employee engagement score. An engaging environment where employees have the ability and willingness to put discretionary effort can greatly impact the business output.

Organizations have started addressing this trend by exploring the open avenues and approaches. A very welcome change. And HR is driving this across the corporate sectors. In these organizations, HR works very closely with the business as true partners.

Why Employee Engagement matters?

Often, in services industries, customer delight is the major differentiator between one brand to another. Only a consistent customer service can differentiate and help to have repeat customers/business. When services are commoditized, it is very difficult to differentiate between a hotel and a hospital. For a continued customer delight experience, employees across all the levels in an organization (eg. Hotels, Airlines, etc.), should give their best and always be ready to travel the extra mile.

Expectation at an employee level varies from person to person. When it comes to job satisfaction, many people are not happy all the time. It is the employer’s job to give meaning and passion to employees. The mind set and demand of employees have changed in the recent past. Their worries not only revolve around Job security, Good Pay and Promotions but finding the Meanings, Values and Sense of Connection towards their work. It’s time to think about the people you employ the same way you think about your customers. Ensure a rewarding environment for the employees, definitely not just financial rewards and success is sure for both the employees and Organization.

How to hit the Right Ratio of Employee Engagement?

Most of the well-run companies, ‘Great Place to Work’ companies have imbibed this in their culture, and they have created the business sense from the something-for-nothing fix – Employee Engagement. Be it GE or Tata or TVS, we can see examples of employee recognition letters dated back to 1950s and we have a lot to learn from those records about making employee visualize the meaning and value of his/her contributions, efforts, etc. for the organization. By doing so, the truly engaged workforce becomes a talented and trusted production pool leading the path towards becoming the brand ambassadors and product advocates. Following are some of the observations on what these companies do:

- Focus on employee appreciation. They have a way to pick up smart people, groom them and assign responsibilities. They have instituted several awards – best employee of the month, Innovator of the year, etc.- Define the roles and responsibilities well. Make sure the responsibilities can be viewed by the employee at any point of the time.- They use metrics wisely. These metrics are focused on individual, team, department, organization, etc. That way, they are able to set the goals, monitor the achievements. For example we can take the Chicago Metro buses which have a target of reaching 20 miles / gallon gas consumption. This sets the goals for all the drivers. They are able to recognize the driver who does exceedingly well and appreciate their contribution.

Just these three activities if done well, helps to engage employees objectively and motivate people. With organizations moving to the wider picture, they prefer some Employee Management Software or PMS software than manual record maintenance.

Synergita for example, supports greatly on Goal management in an effective way. For those who use this software, it is possible to have competencies that are defined Organization wide or Common Goals for a particular department or even employee specific goals or a combination of all these in an appraisal form. So, with Synergita, Setting Goals or tracking them is no longer a pain.

Synergita also offers excellent ways of appreciating and rewarding the employees. The feature being named as “Continuous Feedback” in the software has interesting options that every individual in an organization can get excited.

Visit: http://www.synergita.com/product-overview/overview/continuous-feedback.html to get a gist about the feature.