Organizations have been increasingly realizing the importance of engaging their employees. Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment an employee has towards the organization and its goals. One mistake organizations can make is to place all their emphasis on maintaining their profit margin and ignoring the state of their human resource capital.  

Studies have shown however, that the human resource capital is one of the most essential aspect of any organization, as the success of the organization is hinged on employees’ performance level.  Therefore, organizations need to find a way to harness the discretionary effort that engaged employees deliver, as this can mean the difference between a successful business and one that is struggling or failing.

Many business leaders have recognized the advantages of engaging employees and some have even implemented surveys to measure engagement levels. This however has not translated into having engage employees as there is no follow through on the actions required to achieve and maintain engagement.

Ask yourself what percentage of your employees:

Love their job and company?

Do just enough to get by?

Don’t really care about the company?

If most of your employees do just enough or don’t really care then you are at a clear disadvantage. Your business could be doing much better than it is now if most of your employees love the company.

Five Benefits of Employee Engagement

1. Efficiency and safety increases as engaged employees are more focused and less likely to make mistakes that cost you.

2. Employee turnover is lower as engaged employees are less likely to leave their jobs. It cost more to attract and train new employees than to maintain the employees you already have.

3. Customer satisfaction and loyalty will increase with employee engagement. Engaged employees are more customer focused and satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your business to others.  Engaged employees also have a positive impact on an organization’s reputation by being excellent brand ambassadors.

4. Productivity levels will increase as employee engagement levels increases. Employees who are engaged in their work are more productive because they are motivated beyond personal factors.

5. Profitability increases as employee engagement increases. Employee engagement has serious implications on the organization´s profitability. This impact is mostly indirect but very real. Employee engagement fuels customer satisfaction and loyalty, operational safety and efficiency, and employee productivity and turn over. If all these factors are maintained at the optimum level then the organization is better able to maintain a healthy bottom-line.

What does this mean for your business?

Immediately start taking action to engage your employees because this will increase your organizations profitability and overall financial performance. Let us partner with you today.

Stay tuned to this space as we will be giving more tips on improving employee engagement within your organization.

Sherraine Gardner, MBA (Management Consultancy) is the Owner of SABG Future Solutions.