One of my favorite work experiences took place during the 2012 Summer Olympics. The company I was working for went all in on the Olympic experience. We were an organization of 75,000 across 110 countries, so this was our opportunity to bring together the whole company. We made our own torches, we played silly games, we held medal ceremonies, and we felt like a community. That level of engagement cannot be bought, it has to be fostered.
Since then, I’ve worked for a few companies that did not work to foster engagement. Instead, they played by a “keep your head down and do your work” mentality that ultimately created a hostile environment and kept people guessing about where they really stood. People gathered around the coffee machine to ask others about if their jobs were secure or with whom they should be competing against. No one (myself included) lasted long at these companies, because they had a fundamental problem: their employees were punching the clock, not really caring about the work, their colleagues, or the company as a whole.
When an organization dedicates itself to engagement, it has to go all-in.
How Does Engagement Increase Retention?
Companies with low engagement levels experience 18%–43% higher employee turnover rates than teams with high engagement levels, Gallup found in this meta-analysis report. It’s clear that in this “post-pandemic” world, employees value work-life balance and a positive work environment more than ever. Employee engagement is also the key to finding (and keeping) employees that are the right fit for your organization and weeding out the ones who are not.
What is Positive Engagement?
Employees who feel connected to their workplace are more likely to work harder, stay longer, and encourage their co-workers to follow suit. This begs the question: how can you foster positive engagement in your organization? First things first, positive engagement should start as soon as your employee does. From day one, employees start to form an opinion of their work environment, so it is crucial to come out of the gate with an engaging onboarding experience within your organization. Your organization’s onboarding process should:
- Make new employees feel welcome
- Provide employees access to resources
- Communicate expectations
A positive first experience will set the tone for the full lifecycle of your employees. Beyond onboarding, creating a culture that provides flexibility, work-life balance, and ensures the health and well-being of your team members can significantly increase productivity and longevity within an organization.
How Can Behavioral Assessments Aid in Engagement?
Our most popular hiring assessment is an employee personality assessment, The Omnia Assessment. This kind of personality assessment will give you a solid look at the core, stable behavioral tendencies of a potential employee. Since we measure an individual’s core and usually unvarying traits, you only have to give your candidates one personality test. From there, we can compare your candidate against any position. Knowing how a potential employee would fit into and positively contribute to your organization’s culture is crucial in the selection process when it comes time to make a hiring decision.
As a retention tool, we can also help identify team dynamics that can lead to better team relations. The Omnia Team Dynamics Report takes the Omnia Assessment to the next level. This custom, in-depth report examines how the strengths and challenges of individual team members interact. It provides real solutions for improving communication and cohesiveness. Our team dynamics report can help your organization:
- Learn strategies for developing team members based on individual strengths and challenges.
- Increase self-awareness; when teammates take the time to understand each other and how they each view the world, the group as a whole becomes more effective.
- Address your specific questions and business challenges.
Our assessments can also identify people that are not in the right roles or teams and lead to further discussion on making sure team members are in the right place.
Ways to Engage Your Team Members
A key factor in engaging your teams is to ask for their input. You cannot create a culture suited for your employees if you do not ask them what they need in order to be successful! When organizing company events, gatherings and outings, consider what your team members are interested in. Employees will feel heard and seen when you provide an experience suited for them; not everyone wants a pizza party, change it up! Lastly, make sure that you have a healthy balance of business talk and personal talk. Meetings don’t have to be all business all the time, carve out time for teams to get to know one another and hold space for camaraderie.
Engaged team members make for better business, contact us to find out how we can help your organization up your game.
