Tit for tat and Engagement for Engagement – The role of corporate commitment in driving employee engagement
Among the individual levels evaluations that take place within organizations, the most frequent ones, after employee satisfaction, you have employee engagement reviews. Even if engagement is first of all dictated by one’s intrinsic motivation, organizations can also contribute to its development and maintain it within a desired range by building a corporate culture based on engagement.
Cultures are built by enhancing core values in a multidirectional way, either from the employees towards the organization, from the organization towards the employees or form the employees towards other employees. Because the company is the one building the culture, it also represents the initiator and main advocate for the core values and objectives. Therefore, before evaluating employee engagement, it is recommended that the organization’s leadership reflects upon the engagement it has taken towards the employees’ needs and requests.
Companies can demonstrate engagement towards their employees by ensuring periodical meetings that shift focus from how the employees have performed, towards taking feedback from them about how the organization in performing from their point of view, both internally and externally.
Such meetings are recommended to be conducted as often as possible, with a frequency of at least once a week. To ensure the success of such meetings, they should be conducted individually. Ideally, the list of attendees for these meetings should have one representative from the human resources department, who has a mediator role. Also, such a representative can give relevant directions for discussions, being at the same time an observer during the meeting, taking notes in order to further have all details in view.
Another recommended practice is for one of the organization’s leaders to conduct the meetings that regard the company’s engagement towards its employees. There is a great contribution in having a high profile company representative run these meetings: reinforcing the organization’s commitment towards the employees.
The main participant within such meeting is the employee itself, who attends it in order to express matters related to the organization from his perspective. This aspect should not be neglected, as not to compromise the purpose of this type of meeting.
The encounters between employee, leader and human resources representative should not be long. A maximum of ten minutes represents enough time, due to the fact that the main purpose is to allow each employee to express him or herself individually within a professional framework, in their working context. In this manner employees will know that their opinion matters within the organization and that they are listened to. Simultaneously, leaders remain more grounded in the issues their workers are confronting. This leads to developing and maintaining a relationship based on trust.
Nevertheless, important and relevant aspects are permanently brought into an organization’s attention through these encounters, bring mutual benefits. Needed actions can taken timely and without causing significant damages. Leaders can give feedback instantly on matters raised by employees , given they have the answer and solution, or in time, within the next meetings where an updated status is to be provided.
Certainly, there will also be expressed needs that cannot be fulfilled or issues for which a solution will not be addressed, but it is relevant for the requester to be provided with explanation or justification.
Permanent meetings, accompanied by argumentations or followed by actions taken for the needs expressed display an honest interest towards employees and, implicitly, an engagement to them in investing both time and effort in creating a healthy working environment for the employees.
References:
- National Environmental Education Foundation, Business and Environment and GreenBiz (2011), Toward engagement 2.0: creating a more sustainable company through employee engagement
- Markos, S. (2010), Employee engagement: The key to improving performance
- Dulye, L., Grossman, D., Quinlan, T. and Vanstone, T. (2007), Essential techniques foremployee engagement
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Tags: Employee Performance, Human Resources performance, Performance Management
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