Engagement, Expectation & Attrition

The more we move into the millennial generation, the more value is placed on workplace engagement. The more new employees expect of their workplace, the more important it becomes to deliver what they want.

Gone are the days when "there's the door if you don't like it" would encourage a person to stay. The era of voting with feet is here - if you don't like it, you leave. Employees with talent and capability who would be prepared to work beyond expectation will abandon a culture that doesn't appreciate their efforts, confident in their ability to find one that does.

More and more industries are waking up to people-centric values and the need to walk the talk. If it's not in the mission statement, that's a bad sign; if it is but it's not lived up to, the shortfall will show itself the moment a stranger strolls onto the shop floor. People react to other people according to how they feel in themselves - you can't fake engagement, or serve it up on demand.

Manpower, a recruitment agency that's been around longer than I've been alive, has this to say about workplace priorities:

Ensure your organisation answers the question of what today's workers want. Today's workers don't want to just survive at work, they want to thrive.

Thriving means feeling good about walking through that door in the morning. To thrive is to know that you can grow in confidence - you can learn and develop not only in the skills necessary for the job to be done, but in communication and self-motivation, in being the best of who you can be. People are desperate to advance in the spirit of evolution which as a species we are naturally driven towards. A company that wants to evolve has got to take its personnel along for the ride.

To strategise for workplace excellence, which is what engagement will give you, the plan of action needs to be easily executed and great to take part in... for starters, you need:

A full diagnostic that wasn't done in-house. Nobody trusts in-house surveys no matter how watertight you want to make it; they'll either say what you want to hear or make big issues out of things they believe you need to address. An objective diagnostic will show you what's genuinely important to people at heart, with an honest appraisal of how they feel about being part of the company, which is what you need to begin building engagement.

The full support of your management team. If there are dissidents, do something about it before you start implementing a strategy otherwise there's a good chance you will face sabotage. Then everyone will go back to saying "nothing's going to change around here," because some love the power to resource-guard information and subjugate as they see fit which is the death knell of your people-centric innovations.

Once the foundations are laid and your team is ready to go, a clear pathway to delivery of:

• Communication portals

• Social and individual enrichment

• Advancement opportunities

• Autonomy and collaboration

• Progressive employee involvement

• Stakeholder integration

is essential for sustainable progress to be made and improvements to be measurable. Everyone wants to know about progress and what excellence looks and feels like - they won't want to go back to the way things were before.

WorldLine's Strategy Guide helps you develop and deliver sustainable engagement across the length and breadth of your company, whatever its size. We specialise in SMEs but the principles apply to any organisation with a directorship, sales/admin tier and shop floor. The Strategy Guide is free to those booking a Discovery Session and £89 to everyone else.

According to Google's AI headliner,

Companies with engaged workforces see significant improvement percentages, including 21-23% higher profitability, 17% increased productivity in sales, 10% higher customer loyalty, and 59% less staff turnover. High engagement also leads to a 41% reduction in absenteeism and contributes to a positive workplace culture, but these percentages can vary by industry, company size, and specific engagement strategy. 

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59% reductions in staff turnover are clearly worth having. Whatever you do to engage your workforce, do it now - there is only so much time to waste before it's no longer on your side.

Being genuinely happy at work means letting everyone else share in the privilege!

If you really want engagement to work for you, make it so.