In the hustle and bustle of running a business, it’s easy to overlook the needs of your most valuable asset: your employees.
What are you doing to keep them engaged and excited about their role? Do you have a workplace culture that makes them feel like they belong? Are your employees go the extra mile to help the company succeed? If you take the time to assess whether your employees are truly engaged, you might be surprised.
For instance, the AI@Work: 2021 Global Study founds – 94% of Indian respondents believed their company should be doing more to listen to their needs, and 96% weren’t satisfied with their employer’s support of their careers.
The report further revealed that if organizations don’t offer the right tools for their employees, they risk losing them, especially if they fail to demonstrate how much they value their workforce. Now, what can organizations and CHROs do to retain employees and help them become more engaged and productive?
Skills Enhancement
Workers’ skills for tomorrow are not the same as they were yesterday. As a result, CHROs now play a larger role in engaging existing talent, increasing productivity, and closing the $8.5 trillion talent shortage gap by 2030. The rate of change outpaces efforts to reskill, and you’re always playing catch-up.
In some ways, how you learn is more important than what you learn. Hence, the company’s focus should be on providing people with the know-how to reinvent themselves by developing competencies to be more adaptive and flexible.
Another aspect came from the study appeared that 49% of Indian respondents are looking for organizations to provide –Learning and skill development opportunities, Therefore, it’s important because it encourages creating thinking while also making employees feel valued.
Trust, Inspire and Encourage
Employees will feel more trusted and respected if you give them more decision-making power. Nobody enjoys being micro-managed. When employees are trusted to have ownership of projects, they are more likely to go the extra mile and be satisfied in their roles.
Sit down with the employee one-on-one to discuss the desired outcome. Encourage them to use their own experience and creativity and recognize that they might not carry out the project the same as you would but with their flair.
Incentivize and Acknowledge
Ongoing rewards and recognition program is one of the most effective ways to develop engaged employees. Additionally, recognition is significant when it is peer-driven rather than manager-driven.
Create simple ways for employees to recognize and celebrate one another’s accomplishments, such as dedicating time in all-hands meetings, making announcements on your intranet or posting kudos on office bulletin boards.
The most obvious way to reward employee performance is financially through a hike or bonus or gift cards. Organizations should make it a point to treat raise requests with respect while carefully reviewing the employee’s skills and performance.
CHROs should also ensure that compensation is fair, that the employee sees a clear progressive career path, and that their work/life balance is being taken care of.
Many employees also respond favorably to the reward of being assigned to an exciting new project or given more responsibility, as it makes them feel more valued and respected. Best of all, these strategies can be applied to teams working in-office or at home.
Individual Coaching and Training
Coaching entails working with employees in a thought-provoking and motivating manner to maximize their personal and professional potential.
It is essential for developing performance management, establishing and strengthening your culture, and cultivating deep employee engagement.
It’s critical to find the right kind of coach. CHROs need to find someone with experience in the field and is willing to share their failures and successes, who tailors their advice to specific situations, and who holds the employees accountable for their subsequent actions.
Open Collaboration
Companies with high employee engagement generally have an open-door policy in which everyone is encouraged to contribute. Unfortunately, many organizations have a culture where workers can only raise an issue with a manager after they have devised a solution.
Issues are not identified in this approach in a timely manner, and a better outcome could have been developed with the input of another talent.
Open collaboration entails embracing transparency, which can be difficult for many leaders who were raised to believe that being a leader meant knowing all the answers.
When times are tough, it’s vital to level with employees and share details about both good and bad news. This could even imply providing hard data on business or industry decline.
In conclusion, employees want the opportunity to learn new skills and to feel trusted, acknowledged, and respected. They want to work in an ecosystem that values honesty and transparency while rewarding their contributions. These are all ways to earn their hearts and minds to create an engaged workforce, which lays the groundwork for long-term success.
