Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement

Yesterday, I attended APSCo’s Northern Business Forum in Manchester to discuss employee engagement.

Employee engagement has been proven to have a positive impact on productivity, business outcomes and staff retainment. No longer is it a ‘nice to have’; employee engagement is critical for an organisation to operate effectively and to ensure staff perform to their full ability.

Engaging New Talent

• Tell a story – every company has their own story and that’s how you can differentiate yourself
• Inject personality into that story
• Have the ability to sum up your company ‘vision’ in a sentence
• Engage and be present on social media

An interesting discussion was the reason for internal hires and growth. In recruitment, before growing your team it is important to consider the number of clients you have V’s the number of consultants.

Business development needs to be an on-going activity within a recruitment business. It is crucial to consider that by recruiting more staff – are you just diluting your already strong client base across your business? You need to bring in employees that can confidently bring in new business for the growth to be sustainable. Alternatively, you need to ensure your current consultants are not just relying on existing clients or accounts and that they are bringing in new business to warrant growing their team.

New Hires

We need innovative people; people with new ideas to change and improve current procedures.

Historically, recruitment professionals are known for having certain skills such as; communication, confidence and influential, however, with the developments in technology and ‘social recruiting’, it is also important new employees are tech-savvy. This will enable them to find strong, quality candidates quickly and also discover potential business leads effectively.

An interesting debate was hiring experience v’s rookies – Is it worth hiring someone with experience to show employees you are investing in quality talent or is it a risk – why would they leave an organisation if they are performing well? Are new graduates better as they can be moulded or are they a risk – do they truly know recruitment is for them?

Culture

To ensure employees are engaged, a clear, solid culture needs to be in place across the business. It is important to understand what you want the culture to be and in reality, what is actually is.

It is absolutely crucial you are honest and clear about your culture to potential new hires, every culture is different and some consultants may thrive and be very successful in one company, but fail in another. A culture can be anything from how much management you receive to what the dress code is; is the office very KPI driven or is it much more informal and autonomous?

Vision

Having a clear vision is important to engage employers, they need to understand where the business is going and their personal role in getting there.

The vision needs to be communicated to all employees, make sure EVERYONE knows their personal purpose in achieving the company vision:

• What do they need to do?
• What’s their responsibility?
• How will they be trained to ensure they can achieve this?
• What’s their personal reward?

Make your vision visible and have it displayed around the office to keep everyone engaged in the companies goal.

Engaging Current Employers

Recruitment has often been thought as an industry which engages employees through monetary incentives, however, the general consensus of the forum was that younger generations are much more interested in well-being and a balanced work-life.

• Rewards
• Training
• Culture
• Clear Vision
• Responsibility

If you have a clear vision and target in place; clear communication with individual employees so they know their part in reaching the vision; strong training so they are confident in their ability to achieve their responsibilities and a reward structure to congratulate consultants for their improved performance – this will increase engagement, and ultimately, productivity!