Blog  Work Culture

What Is Employee Engagement, Indeed? The 6th Answer Will Surprise You!
Indhuja Lal  9 min read 

When Samsung came along with Galaxy Note 7, their employees warned the company of risks
in cramming too many elements into an aggregate design. The company turned a blind eye on
the warnings and introduced the product. Soon the phones started exploding and burning
within a few days. Samsung had to go through a massive recall of Galaxy Note 7. The company
obviously experienced huge loss and to worsen the scenario, the internet was lled with trolls
and memes about the exploding phones. From former president Barack Obama to its own
competitor Lenovo, everyone trolled Samsung.

Would you like an example of how employee engagement has helped a company? Douglas
Conant took over as the CEO of Campbell’s soup in 2011 and called it a “bad” company. 62% of
the managers in the company identi ed themselves as not very engaged employees, while
the market share of the company was draining out.

In 2009, only 3% of the managers identi ed themselves as disengaged, while 68% said they
were actively engaged employees.

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He committed himself to the employees. He improved the physical premises by having the
barbed wire removed. He then focused on enhancing manager communications. He also tried
to connect with them individually and instituted programs to congratulate individual success.
From thank you notes to dining with them, Campbell did all that he can to connect with them.

It was all about cultivating a culture of engagement. It was not the hockey or expensive
additions that nally did the trick.

Employment engagement is the hot new buzzword in the market and no two people agree on
the same de nition, you’ll nd.  Having lost all hope on humanity for an answer, and you
might ask Google the same question.

There, you would be swarmed with de nitions, explanations and employee engagement
ideas that you want to steal instantly. You would be closing the web browser getting even
more confused.

So, what is employee engagement?

Organizations around the world have recognized employee engagement as a crucial factor
and are striving to achieve it. But mostly it ends up like shooting blind. From all the
de nitions you have come across, you might have picked up a few keywords and has
formulated your own de nition for what is employee engagement. The keywords would be
employee satisfaction, enthusiasm, better work environment, emotional connection,
bonuses, healthcare policies etc. You have done everything you can to keep your employees
happy. You moved to an awesomely designed o ce, you added 10 more items in the
cafeteria, you have been giving appraisals, bonuses, insurance etc. Still, you are losing
employees. Losing employees hurts more than losing customers. You have now completely
lost your hopes on this power of employee engagement that everybody is talking about.

Employee engagement is essentially an emotional state. It is about how well your

employees are connected to your company emotionally and nope, you cannot achieve it by
giving bonuses or spacious worktable. Does that mean you don’t have to? No!

There are always companies that are ready to pay your employees more and to o er cool
o ces. It is the emotional quotient they have developed towards your company and how
aligned their individual goals are with your organization’s goal that matters.

If you haven’t identi ed root causes for your employees leaving you or not contributing
enough, the price that you pay in the end would be too devastating. Giving bonuses doesn’t
make the employee who is fed up of micromanaging stay. There is no one solution that ts
all answer for what is employee engagement. If in one company it was crammed workload in
another it could be a nosy manager whereas in the next it could be less pay.

There are stories of companies that have had to face re because they failed to connect with
their employees. Your employees know your company inside out. Only when you reciprocate
the trust and con dence as your employees do in you, the bridge is complete. You cannot
expect to be condescending all the time and then complain that your employees are not
creatively active enough. Wanna check out some amazing employee engagement activities?

You have been hearing the term ‘engagement’ or ‘engaging’ so often, and I am sure you
know what that means. Your employee is motivated to nish the work on time, he gives
valuable input every day, he is on time and actively participates in the meeting and has
nothing but positive to say.
Is that the whole answer for what is employee engagement? Is that all what engagement
comprises of?

No!

This also means the computer engineer does overtime without being asked to, the
accountant picks up trash from the oor even when there is nobody to see. Engaged
employees lead to better revenue and business outcomes. A research conducted by Towers
Perrin claims that companies with engaged workers are enjoying 6% higher net pro t
margins. While another research says that companies with engaged employees have ve
times higher shareholder returns over ve years.

Let’s now move on to the areas which actually aids and abets the engagement of employees
in your business. 

1. Communication With Heart And Soul

The emotional element inherent to all communications that happen in the o ce space is
often overlooked by the HR and communication professionals. In fact, these
communications have a direct impact on employee engagement. When an employee is given
proper and positive communication, they would de nitely feel like they are looped in and is
included. This emotional element in those communications can in uence our basic human
need to feel valued.

Good communication establishes a link between executives and their employees, managers
and their direct reports. An e ective communication strategy promises a reliable and
legitimate relationship between the employees. This would help you to achieve the goals of
your organization with solidarity.

If you think having such a status is quite natural, you need to think twice. A well-established
communication neither grows overnight nor does it have any shortcuts. It takes experienced
planning and strategic execution to get it done.

You cannot smother your employees with too much communication too. You should be able
to balance it to the right amount or you will ruin it completely.
So how do you know when to stop?

Well, that depends on the size and the type of the organization.

For company-wide communications, the recommended frequency is once a week, though

once a month could also yield somewhat similar information. Quality communications that
are frequent demands time and resource. But keep in mind that not all piece of
communication requires to be overly produced. Employee engagement surveys can go a long
way in this regard. Sometimes, just a well-written email from the CEO to the entire company
now and then could produce a very positive impact on employee engagement.

2. Caring About Employee Health And Fitness

A research conducted shows that 62% of engaged employees claim their work has only
positive e ects on their physical health. That number drops to 22% amongst the employees
who are actively disengaged.

The health campaigns and wellness campaigns play a very crucial role when it comes to
building an emotional connection between employers and employees. Especially when 54%
of disengaged respondents say their work a ects their health negatively,51% feels that it
a ects their well-being too.

Likewise, 54% of self-assessed disengaged respondents say their work has a negative e ect
on their health, while 51% see a negative e ect on their well-being. Caring about your
employees are no longer just a perk or a nice gesture, it has also some business value
attached to all the employee health and welfare initiatives.

You would be amazed to know that the new Harvard Business Review reveals that on
average, employers who had invested in health and wellness initiatives for their employees
measured a 3-to-1 return as money saved… You are actually saving money in the long run by
not have to spend thousands of dollars on healthcare costs. You are also e ectively reducing
productivity-loss happening because of constant absenteeism.

Like a cherry on the top, group tness challenges and marathons conducted promotes
teamwork and encourages congeniality which would ultimately bene t the organization to
form a stronger core team.

3. Ensuring Personal Growth

Talented people have become your most precious commodity these days. Having an
employee engagement strategy in place is crucial. How would your employee be emotionally
connected if he or she doesn’t feel like you care enough about their individual development?
Employees are driven with a voracious desire for growth. They need to constantly feel like
they are top of their game. If they feel like it is a dead end job with no promising growth
ahead they are going to look outside for better opportunities.

Encouraging your customers to work on passion projects is an amazing opportunity to

inspire your employees. This can be something that is business related or something that
they want to invest personally in. This keeps your employees motivated and ensures them
that you are also standing beside their desires and ideas. This could be a nice gesture to show
that you believe in their talents which can only boost their self- esteem.

4. Recognition Wherever They Earned It

Why do we go for work? For Money?

The famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman and Princeton Economist Angus Deaton
conducted a research on the impact of money on happiness. Interestingly, they made
headlines when they demonstrated that money doesn’t actually contribute much to our
happiness. Not even above 75000 dollars a year.

Income you have earned beyond this surprisingly does not have any remarkable e ect on our
contentment. What does that tell you? Rather than seeing money as a scorecard, it should be
seen as just a threshold.

This is where recognition programs enter.

Recognition programs can create an emotional connection between employees and the
employer. But how does it work?

Well, the answer lies in psychology. Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ is a framework he has
designed to understand our drive, motivation, and even the deepest human needs.

While nancial rewards ful ll our basic needs for survival. Higher level needs like our self-
esteem and our need to belong, cannot be satiated by money. Whereas, peer to peer
recognition can satisfy both these needs.

An act of being recognized would help the individual to satisfy ones need to feel like a valued
member of the community. If an employee is given adequate recognition to would de nitely
generate the emotional element required to engage him.

5. Managers Who Mentor

Employees who have trust in their managers are said to have more pride in the company and
are more likely to be con dent in their individual talents and about the organization. These
feelings would de nitely have a direct and signi cant impact on your company’s ability to
retain the necessary talent. Training managers to showcase their best leadership qualities,
helps you to harness this kind of power. It will portray a remarkable increase in employee
engagement and employee retention rate.
Of course, the organization needs senior leadership when it comes to deploying engagement
strategies. They set the vision and goals of your company. They set the tone for the
organization and has a direct impact on their engagement and wellness initiatives.

But in reality, in most companies, middle management has a bigger in uence on

engagement than the executives. They are the bridge between the top management and the
rest of the organization.

They get to make regular contact with your employees, they are the ones executing your
strategies and visions and therefore becomes the essential element in your engagement
strategy. According to some studies, managers are accountable for 70% of the variance in
employee engagement scores.

The Dale Carnegie study reveals that the chief emotional driver in the workplace is the
immediate supervisor. It is the reactions to him or her that explains how 8% of employees’
emotions towards the organization.

6. Fostering Friendships
We all have heard the advice to keep out personal life intact from our professional life.
Mixing those up have always been predicted to be disastrous. Contrast to this popular belief,
fostering a community sense with real bonding and camaraderie in the workplace should be
considered as a strategic element of your company culture. All the research conducted on the
matter brings proof to support that. Close work friendships have boosted employee
satisfaction by 50% while having a best friend at work makes him/her seven times more
likely to be engaged at work. In short, having a friend at your place brings in a higher level of
contentment and happiness.

This makes the employees less stressed and more e cient. The work-life integration gives
the employees an opportunity to be more comfortable in exhibiting their true selves.
Employee engagement is fundamentally rooted in the emotional connection between the
employees and their company. Forming personal bonds can inspire positivity towards the
company and its goals

Wrapping Up!
I agree that this was a lot of information. But this shows that you care enough about your
employees and that you want to know what is employee engagement and its strategies. You
are half way there! The most important factor in employee engagement is to have the right
mindset. By spending the time and e ort to understand what employee engagement is, you
have proved that you have the right attitude.

Many tech companies employ hackathon, a more focused method in passion projects. The
employees are given a nite amount of time, in which developers work in teams to develop
an idea into an MVP, minimum viable product. At the end of the session, a panel judges all
the products and declares a winner. The idea or product need not have to be related to the
company. It is all about setting a platform for the employees to share their ideas. GroupMe,
the group messaging platform, which was acquired by Skype was a product from a
hackathon.

There is no de nite answer to what employee engagement is. It varies according to your
company and how far you are willing to go for your employees. It is now time to bring
everything that has been discussed here together and to plan an employee engagement
strategy that suits your company. Make your employees truly engaged and proud!

Indhuja Lal
Product Marketer at SurveySparrow

A dilettante bohemian soul mesmerized with the magic of words, sworn to be unpredictable, and spellbound
with the simplicity of humanity...
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