The organizations winning in today’s CX landscape all share a key trait – an engaged workforce. This article shares four easy steps your organization can enact today to empower employees, including:
- How to make culture matter.
- How to find the game-changers.
- How to create relevant experiences.
- How to know what’s important.
Read on this article to unlock engagement amongst your workforce.
Employee Engagement Practices for the Modern Workplace
The organizations winning in today’s CX landscape all share a key trait—an engaged workforce. An engaged employee who feels like their work matters is more likely to excel at customer interactions and increase returns for the brands they work for. More importantly, they are also more likely to have a sense of value and pride for their organization, which leads to long-term employee retention and loyalty.
Unlocking an engaged workforce goes beyond the promise of physical incentives such as higher pay or fancy breakrooms. Companies must recognize the changing values important to the next generation of employees.
This new wave of employees no longer views their career as a ‘duty’, but an opportunity to explore one’s passions and make an impact on the world. Employees want to come into work because they believe in what they do. And this means having a meaningful, two-way relationship with their organization and leaders.
Here are four easy steps your organization can enact today to empower employees.
4 Steps to Employee Engagement
Make your culture matter
A positive culture means fulfilling your workforce with a sense of purpose and attracting highly motivated individuals who mirror your values. But you cannot achieve this by laying out a set of buzzwords like leadership, responsibility, and fun in your corporate motto. It’s about setting these rules into action.
Companies with highly engaged employees are clearly defining and enacting their values into their day-to-day activities. Company and individual goals and purpose should be made clear and align around the entire organization. This sets a culture foundation and empowers employees confidently to make decisions that correctly represent the brand and its values.
Leaders can influence an engaged culture by regularly sharing updates on how employee contributions make a difference in and out of the office space.
Find the game changers
Leaders who follow a rigid hierarchal leadership model may have an outdated view of what really goes on in their employees’ daily lives. Engaging employees means listening closely to what’s going on around the company. Organizations need to find the game changers amongst their employees and hear them out.
Workplace influencers are the go-to people that your employees listen to and look up to. Pull them together to create on-going engagement programs that collect feedback on how to improve their workplace based on what they regularly encounter and hear.
Create relevant experiences
The most effective CX strategies are designed according to your company’s particular goals, challenges, and structure. Therefore, a partner should be asking a lot of preliminary questions and listening carefully to ensure the most appropriate services and technology solutions are being delivered.
When comparing firms, ask candidates what their initial discovery process entails. Other questions to ask include: How long is the discovery process and how detailed is it? Which members on your team does the partner want to speak with? A strong partner takes the time to develop a deep understanding of your business, competitors, challenge, and goals. Red flags should go up if a potential partner assures you the firm will go straight into strategic consulting without a thorough discovery process.
Know what’s important in life
As the line between work and life continues to blur for many industries, be the differentiator that shows you care about your employees’ well-being.
Health and wellness programs, financial tools and personal growth initiatives will help employees feel that they have the support of company leadership. Investing in your employees’ emotional intelligence can show you care about their mindfulness and mental health inside and outside of work.
Key Insights
Do it for the right reason
Leaders need to understand that employee engagement is not only for the sake of performance but also for the sake of wellness and mental health.
The little things matter
Use social forums as internal knowledgebases to share and update tips from influential employees for real-time use.
Keep the tech relevant
When deploying gamified platforms, test-and-learn extensively on different channels such as smartphones to monitor the user experience. Clunky technology can defeat the purpose.
Do not waver your ideals
No matter the financial stakes or intensity of a predicament, leaders must do their best to take on the ongoing role of their organization’s prescribed beliefs and values.
Source: TTEC