How to engage your employees

According to Crim and Seijts (2006), a truly engaged employee is someone who is completely invested in the vision of their organisation. This type of employee is committed to living the organisation’s values and also applies themselves in reaching the organisation’s goals (Crim & Seijts, 2006). So how do organisations encourage an engaged workforce?

Organisations can create work environments that foster engagement by ensuring that all the bases are covered when it comes to their employees’ needs. This includes, but it is not limited to, cultivating a healthy social environment, ensuring employees have the facilities and resources needed to achieve company goals as well as providing employees with the opportunity to take on challenging work.

When an organisation creates an environment that cultivates engagement, not only does this make for a happier and more productive workplace, but it also becomes easier to attract new talent, in addition to spotting true talent amongst their existing employees. So how do we here at Workpoints make sure that our clients generate this culture of engagement?

In our latest blog we spoke about our engagement survey that is created in-house by our Behavioural Specialist team. In this, we highlight that before we set-out to set-up your Workpoints programme according to your specific organisational requirements, it is important that we first understand the needs of your employees. We do this by sending out our short 19 question engagement survey directly to your employees.

The fundamental underpinning of our research links work engagement to Maslow’s interpretation of an individual's needs. The results that we receive from this survey speak directly to the theory underlying our programme. With a bit of moulding and shaping, we are able to apply these results, according to the theory, to maximise your business performance.

Our survey takes into account the following 5 categories

1) Do people feel comfortable with the basics?

2) Do people feel safe and secure in their work environment?

3) Do people feel they fit in at work?

4) Do people feel good about themselves and their efforts at work?

5) Do people feel they can reach their full potential at work?

Based on the results we receive from your engagement survey and the links we make between these and the above 5 categories, we then advise you on how best to set up your customisable Workpoints programme. This will encourage the addressing of possibly unmet employee needs. We then monitor the data captured by your programme to see if behaviour, specific to the respective need levels, is improving. We also conduct follow up engagement surveys to stay on top of how your employee’s needs might be changing.   

Simply put, that is how we tackle employee engagement!

For more on our engagement survey, stay in touch for our next blog or contact us on info@workpoints.co.za

Author

Jillian Dabbs (MCom Industrial Psychology)

Jillian is a part of our Behavioural Specialist team here at Workpoints. She is our content developer, our avid blogger as well as our party planner.

Workpoints is a fully featured reward, recognition and incentives platform that provides you with the tools to create a high performance organisation. Our easy-to-use application integrates simply into any organisation and instantly encourages staff to do the daily grind with excellence and energy. Visit www.workpoints.co.za for more info and a free trial!

References

Crim, D. & Seijts, G. (2006). What Engages Employees the Most OR, the Ten Cs of Employee Engagement. Ivey Business Journal: Improving the Practice of Management.