Employee engagement is key to long term success for a business. If an employer takes time to understand employees’ values and motivations it can have a revelatory effect on their team.
In the ever important Macleod report that was published in 2008 but still is highly relevant today, it is said that people join companies but leave managers. This indicates the fact that managers have a key role to play in terms of employee engagement and retention.
It is therefore vital for business that HR supports managers to deepen the level of engagement within their team. So how can HR departments do this? One method that has been used effectively in the past is HR supporting managers to find out more information from their team members, such as what is important to them, how they envisage their career progressing and then once this information has been discovered they can do everything within their power to help support that individual and increase their engagement with the business.
This method effectively means managers find out each team member’s values, acting as a key determining factor in an individual’s motivation as it is common knowledge that people want to do things that align with their personal values. On the other hand, if a business believes that an individual’s values and goals do not fit in with the company and where the company is heading then it will have a knock on effect on an employee’s motivation and engagement.
The process of finding out values starts with asking the right questions. By posing a series of questions and carefully listening to the answers, the manager will get an abundance of useful and usable information about their employees which will help with engagement and retention. Here is an example of how this might look in practice:
Using a method like this will usually take approximately 5-10 minutes which is a small period out of the working day in the grand scheme of what the activity is trying to achieve in terms of engagement and retention. At the end of the process the manager and business will have a large amount of data which they can use in order to create a plan of action to maximise motivation and avoid demotivating employees.
Once the manage has collected all of the results and got clear points of action it is vital that the employees feel as if they were listened to and the manager implements methods to make sure each employees values are being met, which will drive up employee engagement. Employees report that if their manager adopts new methods in order to make sure their values are listened to then they feel far more engaged.
In certain situations the process highlights the fact that an individual is not suited to the particular role. If this is the case it means that certain steps can be taken in order to make sure the employee is motivated and is in the right position in order to stay engaged with the business. This is also where the role of HR will be vital.
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