A 7 Step Roadmap to Improve Employee Engagement in Your Organisation

If you’re unsure how to improve employee engagement in your organisation, it can be a daunting experience to know where to start. It’s such a massive topic and one that is not easy to improve overnight. But it’s worth your while to focus on improving employee engagement as there are many pluses to an engaged workforce. 

For example, if your people are engaged, the organisation should experience higher productivity, lower turnover, more trust, a stronger company reputation, and cost savings. In fact, research by Gallup shows that an engaged workforce is 17% more productive, their customer ratings are 10% higher, and 21% more profitable.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? 

So, are you ready to start improving employee engagement in your organisation? Follow our roadmap steps below.

Step 1: Identify who is responsible for improving employee engagement.

Although HR may be responsible for owning and driving the engagement roadmap, the process isn’t just down to them. HR should collaborate with managers, senior leaders, and all employees. While it’s likely that HR will plan, implement and measure employee engagement initiatives, they require employees to give open and honest feedback and senior leaders and managers to gain buy-in to the initiatives and to help implement action plans and change.

Step 2: Measure current levels of engagement.

How can you possibly improve engagement if you don't know how engagement levels in your company? This is an essential starting point in your road map because you can't create improvements or objectives if you don't do a temperature check. Therefore, identify ways to measure engagement depending on time, funds, and resources.

Ensure that you measure all aspects of the employee experience, including:

• Roles/responsibility
• Wellbeing
• Pay and benefits
• The physical environment
• Training development
• Tools and technology
• Management and relationships

This is vital because what's important to one person may not be to another, so you need to measure a range of engagement areas.

You might use technology to run and review surveys and collect data internally for other areas (such as absenteeism rates).

There are different ways you can do this, including:

• Employee engagement surveys
• Pulse surveys
• Measuring data, including turnover, absence, and output
• Collecting verbal feedback via team meetings or one-to-ones
• Asking employees for anonymous feedback or suggestions

Once you have a clear picture of your organisation’s engagement levels, you can move on to the next step and start doing something about it!

Step 3: Creating goals and objectives.

What you do next will depend on survey results, data, or feedback. For example, if engagement levels are only low in specific departments or are mainly linked to management issues, these are the areas you will probably choose to focus on improving.

Alternatively, there may be issues in lots of areas that need addressing. If this is the case, it may not be possible to approach every area simultaneously for improvements, so it may be that the leadership team highlight the top three areas that require improvement and then begin to establish the objectives for these areas.

You can’t improve every area at once, so prioritise the most pressing needs.

Step 4: How to measure success?

When you know what areas of the employee experience you want to improve, it's essential to consider how you will measure change. In some areas, this may be a simple case or reviewing data over time; for example, you could compare turnover rates in six months to see if there has been an improvement. Similarly, you could run some pulse surveys a few months after the initial results using the same questions where there were areas of concern to see if there are improvements (rather than rerunning the whole employee survey).

Another idea is to benchmark your data or results against similar organisations to see how you compare at the beginning and after six months (or a year) to give you some idea of how you compare in the market.

Step 5: Establish actions.

Once you have the engagement results, it's time to put actions into place. There will be high-level action plans set by senior leadership and then related action plans for relevant teams or departments.

So, for example, if there were management issues across the organisation, this may be an action for the senior leadership and, in turn, actions for each team. Or, if management issues were only a concern in one department, then senior management and HR should work closely with that department to create action plans and ways to measure change or success.

Once the action plans have been agreed upon, they should be documented and communicated to the relevant people. This way, actions are taken seriously because they are recorded and will be reviewed and not forgotten.

Step 6: Communicate results and actions.

When you have established the employee engagement results and actions, don't forget to tell the most important people: your employees! If you've told them that you value their feedback and they take the time to give it, but they see nothing more about it, it could hurt engagement and trust in the company. Therefore, take your time to collate and analyse the results and present the key findings, next steps, and action plans to employees.

Then it is down to managers to speak to their teams and discuss specific actions with them.

This really is a crucial part of your engagement roadmap because if you don't communicate with your people, you could undo all the good that you might have done by seeking feedback in the first place.

For more information, you can also read our recent blog on Why is Employee Communication Important.

Step 7: Continue to measure engagement.

Employee engagement doesn't stop at this stage. It’s something that should be measured and reviewed continuously and not neglected. If you follow all these steps to measure and improve employee engagement and then a year later, engagement is never discussed again; employees may lose trust in the company, and management and engagement could plummet!

At this stage, it's also worth HR reviewing what has worked so far in improving employee engagement. If HR has done all measuring and reviewing of the results themselves in-house, it's the perfect opportunity to review technology and choose software that can help them streamline the process and save time. 

The right software will allow you to measure engagement in various ways and keep all feedback and information in one place. It will also enable you to run another survey and compare past results to current results.

How to improve employee engagement in healthcare?

There have been significant changes to healthcare with increasing pressure on all aspects of the profession. Staff, especially frontline workers, will have been stretched. 

In one study, 93% of health care workers said they were experiencing stress, and 76% reported burnout and exhaustion, so that engagement will have taken a significant hit. Therefore, healthcare companies need to understand their staff’s concerns by listening to them and supporting them. 

This may be internal mentoring, increased peer and management support, and clear communication about business objectives and how they contribute.

How to improve employee engagement in manufacturing?

The manufacturing industry is challenging to work in with 24/7 operation, shift work, and physically demanding conditions. Employees need to understand that they are appreciated and valued. 

Fairly remunerating employees can do this to accommodate unusual working hours, and the introduction of tenure or performance-based bonuses and premium pay for unsociable shifts may improve engagement. 

In addition, workers may be more engaged if they see the bigger picture of the products they are helping to create and have regular feedback from their managers, who they may not physically see all the time.

How to improve employee engagement in a call centre?

The nature of a call centre means that job variety is minimal, and the work can be mundane. Therefore, employers need to ensure that there are physical spaces in the workplace for employees to take breaks, socialise, and talk to their managers or colleagues.

 It’s also essential to train employees properly and give them structured training programmes to provide a sense of purpose.

The Bottom Line: Improving Employee Engagement is an Ongoing Journey

An engagement roadmap ensures your commitment to improving employee engagement and gives a structured, step-by-step guide to measuring and improving engagement continuously. 

Done well, this can make your employees happier and more committed to your organisation and engage individuals from the moment they interview with you and throughout their employee life cycle. Roadmaps ensure that all steps are followed, and the approach to engagement is consistent and continuous. 

The right software can improve the process and allow HR and managers to spend their time on other tasks or actions.

Sorwe provides the tools you need to assess, evaluate and improve employee engagement in your organisation. Please get in touch with us to learn more about how Sorwe solutions can help you improve your employee engagement practices.