Just like in the title, we can see two sides to employee engagement: the art (creating engaging environments that are unique to your organization) and science (measuring engagement through surveys).   

Employee Engagement is a buzz word and an employee’s interest to fully engage with the company. The employees who put extra effort into the organization should be valued and should feel that they are part of the organization. The organization must invest to implement a few simple strategies for employee retention, satisfaction, and performance.    

Improving engagement among employees has a direct impact on a company’s income. Engaged employees are high-performing employees and leaders, who should pay more attention to their reportees.    

The team leaders and reporters must understand that their engagement has a direct impact on the company’s ability to achieve desired business results. So, these leaders along with the team members should identify the engagement goals by initiating the new strategic business goals. For example, if one of the business goals is to “increase revenue by 25 percent over the next quarter,” various ways that improved engagement shall be identified will make that happen. For employee engagement, there should be a better communication plan or an incentive program. The engagement initiatives shall be well connected to departments/teams that generate revenue. Like any business goal, an engagement goal should be measurable and achievable.   

It is not just the HR who should create and implement initiatives that improve employee engagement but the organization as well because productivity, turnover, customer satisfaction and income are all impacted by employee engagement.   

In simple terms, an employee engagement drive requires capturing employee feedback through employee engagement surveys that are going to be critical components to improve outcomes in any company. The collection of feedback data will not mean anything until and unless the engagement drivers are identified by HR and team leaders, and then acted upon. An engagement program is needed to analyze and identify the drivers of engagement, retention, culture, performance, and productivity in real-time.  

To improve employee engagement, keep the following things in mind.   

1. As there is a saying “Change is inevitable in an organization.” – Initiate employee engagement programs that make changes across all departments in all directions right from the top-level, cascading through different levels.   

2. Work to identify the high, middle and low effort actions to improve engagement and compare them with the high, middle and low impact effects.   

3. Make sure business leaders are responsible for putting into action any changes that need to be made in the organization. HR will be there to support them every step of the way.   

4. Drive greater engagement in the organization – Through employees’ ideas or suggestions identify the drivers of engagement, retention, and culture for your organization.   

To conclude, the engagement efforts are not a top-down plan. All employees need to understand their roles for an engagement effort to succeed. Knowing their responsibilities itself is the art and science to any employee engagement initiative.