Editor’s note: Tore Haggren is senior vice president, voice of the employee at market research vendor Confirmit, San Francisco.
It’s no surprise that the attitude of your employees has a direct correlation to the productivity and success of your business. While this is important, companies often spend too much time focused on how to keep employees happy, thinking that the happier you make them, the harder they will work for you. In fact, the general feeling of happiness is not enough of an indicator of how a business and its employees work together to achieve success.
If you’re looking for the real key to success, it’s in measuring employee engagement, which has a much more comprehensive set of criteria than happiness alone. Engaged employees don’t simply work to get paid, or to move to the next step on the ladder – they work because they care about the company, the quality of their work and the overall business results. While happiness is still important, there is a deeper connection in engagement vs. happiness alone that comes in part from employees being mindful of business goals and understanding that they play a major role in achieving those goals.
While this sounds good in theory, companies are still 
struggling with how to engage their workforce. A recent Gallup report found, “The bulk of employees worldwide – 63 percent – are not engaged, meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest in discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes. And 24 percent are actively disengaged, indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers. In rough numbers, this translates into 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe.”
Employee engagement doesn’t have to remain a mystery to companies. There are ways to approach your employee engagement strategy and think about what will work best for your business and employees.
If your business needs to rethink its approach to employee engagement, keep these ideas in mind:
Customer experience and employee engagement go hand-in-hand. Engaged employees are more likely to engage customers but most businesses treat customer-related activities as an entirely separate entity to employee engagement, and vice versa. Engaged employees will be able to provide better customer experiences and drive greater profitability. They can also provide valuable insight into customer experience and offer a view that an organization may not derive from customer feedback exclusively. Don’t separate the two from each other.
Leaders hold the key to employee engagement. A recent report from Aon Hewitt highlighted that engaging leaders think, feel and act in different ways than do typical leaders. Leaders have a multiplier effect on engagement in that they affect engagement through control over all the top drivers, in addition to having a direct effect on the engagement of others through their interactions. If you want to increase employee engagement, start with your company’s leaders and identify areas where you can improve. If you’re investing in an employee engagement program, make sure you involve your organization’s top leaders. The most successful employee programs need full internal buy-in.
Tailor your feedback approach. How do your employees want to interact and share feedback with you? The right feedback channel vs. the wrong channel may make a huge difference to your employees. Don’t just rely on standard surveys on an annual or biannual basis. Forward-thinking organizations now complement traditional HR surveys with a wealth of methods to monitor, measure and react to changes in employee engagement. Short, relevant and timely surveys either on paper, online, a mobile device or SMS may give you better and more timely insight into how engaged your workforce is.
Share results and celebrate success. Satisfaction does not equal employee commitment. Employee commitment is not that same as employee engagement. When we talk about measuring engagement, we are talking about understanding the level of emotional commitment that employees have to a business. To create that emotional commitment, you must be transparent with results, acknowledge hard work. If you ensure that you’re closing the employee feedback loop, whether that’s acting on direct employee feedback or feedback about customer experience that’s been shared by employees, this will bolster engagement. Some companies have virtual high-fives on employee intranets, encouraging employees to share customer success stories and offer kudos to coworkers for their hard work. Keep in mind that the opportunity to celebrate success, no matter how big or small, is something that you should always take advantage of.
What are some of the other ways you’re creating employee engagement?