Our Guide to

Employee Engagement

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Our guides are here to help you understand a topic or to provide support for a particular task you might already be working on. Inside you’ll find lots of information to help you plan and make better

decisions. We’re not saying we have all the answers but we believe the stuff inside this guide will help get you started. If you think we’ve missed anything, or you want to join in the debate then please get in touch.

Inside you’ll find

• What is employee engagement?• Why is it important?• Measuring engagement • Some important things to consider• How we can help

What is employee engagement?In a nutshell

Employee engagement is about creating happy staff who are passionate about what they do. It’s about creating experiences which reward them for their ambition, loyalty and support. It helps you to keep your employees for longer and reduces the chances of them taking their skills and expertise elsewhere.

It’s about

• Understanding your employees and finding out what matters to them

• Understanding how employees view their relationship with you, their management and the wider

business

• Understanding how valued and recognised they feel as an employee

• Understanding and identifying where the business can improve the employee experience, whether

through development opportunities, training or recognition

• Speaking to your employees on a regular basis, gauging their degree of engagement and exploring

their mood

• Identifying ways to improve employees’ involvement in the business

Why is employee engagement so important If you get it right the benefits are endless

Stay with you for longer. They’ll remain loyal and immune to

offers and opportunities elsewhere

Work harder. They’ll be more productive as they have a

bigger stake in success

Recruit for you. They encourage others to apply for

jobs. They’ll rave about working with you

Speak up more. They’ll be more willing to share their ideas, views and opinions. Your business will be rewarded with continuous fresh thinking

Be happier. They’ll take less time off work recovering from a stressful and unenjoyable job.

Develop themselves. They’ll want to learn more and push themselves. Your business will benefit from their ambition

Be more effective in their jobs. They’ll know what their role is in delivering your business objectives. They will understand

the part they have to play

Work better together. They’ll understand each others’ pressures and needs. They’ll appreciate that they work only

as a ‘team’

Work better with senior management. They will want to help leaders deliver. They will understand how their role fits

into the wider picture

Value more than just a monthly pay packet. They’ll see reward in recognition and a simple thank you. They’ll understand

how valuable they are to your business

Employees will…

Measuring Employee Engagement

The modules of employee engagement The building blocks that make up the employee experience

Skills & TrainingRemuneration &

Appreciation

Workspace & Culture

Reward & Recognition

Learning & Development

Resources & SupportLeadership &

Relationships

Roles & Remits

Career planning

Skill development

Recognised

qualifications

Pay

Bonus

Rewards

Incentives

Job roles and remits

Objectives and targets

Reviewing

performance

Management

Cross team working

Boss, peer, junior

relationships

“I know where my career is

going – I’m being given help

internally to get there”

“I get rewarded for good

work. I feel valued by the

company and it’s nice that

they don’t just reward those

at the top”

“I know what my job entails,

how it benefits the business

and what part I play in

helping it achieve its aims”

“I feel part of a strong team.

We have leaders who keep

us up-to-date and involved

in decision making – we all

have a voice”

Focus areas

Employee

Outcome

Statement

Step 1: Define the ideal employee experienceThink about an employee’s lifetime journey and the experience focus areas

Speak to your employees. Ask them

to help you define the ideal

employee experience. Gather all your

HR best practice work and start

identifying the elements that make up

a great employee experience. You’ll

need to design an experience which

is standard across the whole business.

Once you’ve done this you can start

to think of individual team and role

experiences. It’s worth thinking about

the employee lifetime journey and

how that experience should be

designed, managed and enhanced.

Start to think of ideas that will match

employee expectations and need.

Remember to review the focus areas

we mentioned on the previous page.

They’ll get you thinking about all the

various components that make up

the experience.

Step 2: Baseline your current employee experience and engagement Assess realities and emotions

Bring a sample of your employees

together to discuss their current

experience and how engaged they feel.

Ask them open questions so they can feel

free to discuss things that might be

bothering them. Make sure you lay down

some ground rules and encourage

participants to speak freely – it might be

an idea to bring in someone independent

to help run a few sessions.

You then want to consider running a wider

piece of research that will give you a

broader view across the business. Design a

survey where employees can rate and

score their experience against a set of

capabilities. Leave some room for some

free text answers – not everyone will have

had a chance to speak in a smaller face

to face group.

Step 3: Analyse the results, start improvement planning and measure progressMake improvements, measure the impact

Sit down and go through the results of the

employee survey. Identify broad trends and do your best to summarise the data. It will take a while but spend some time going through the verbatim and free text answers people might have left. The scoring will give you a quick idea of engagement and experience but the free text replies will give you some real

insight into how your employees are thinking and feeling.

Like any research project, follow it up with some improvement planning. Identify where you need to focus your efforts. It might be on certain roles or within certain teams. There might be focus areas where there is underperformance such as learning and development.

Start putting those improvements in place and don’t forget to thank your employees for being so honest. Remember to keep them informed of the changes you’re making. They

will feel engaged.Improvement 1: Reward & Recognition Pilot

Weekly sales executive reward – an evening out paid for.

Reward for customer complaint handling and mitigation

Some important things to consider

Examine emotionsThink about how you want to understand employee emotion

Worry

Apprehension

Hope

Trust

Dismayed

Lonely

Ambivalent

Emotions in business are often hard to quantify, register and act upon. The important thing to remember is how important emotions are in any experience. We spend the majority of our day at work and therefore emotions are an intrinsic part of the experience. We all have ups and downs at work and whether these are directly caused by work or not they’re still important to assess.

Don’t avoid getting stuck in with emotion. If you can get to a place where you can influence and encourage positive emotions then your employee experience will improve dramatically.

Think about the last stressful period you had at work. What would have helped? What didn’t help during that experience? Use this to start generating ideas.

Never, ever reprimand or punish Avoid taking bad survey news as licence to ‘shoot the messenger’

It’s hard taking bad news. It’s even

harder when it’s from people who you

hoped were happy and content. Don’t

fret too much about any bad news that

might come out of surveys you might do.

Bad news will at least get your business

making the changes it needs to make.

There’s no use brushing it under the

carpet.

Under no circumstances should you tell

your employees off for being honest.

You’ve given them the opportunity to

speak up and you should be grateful that

they’ve taken the chance to share their

views.

Thank you for taking

part. Thank you for

your honesty. We

have listened and

now we will act.

Exciting times ahead for us all.

How we can helpYou’re not alone

1Engagement projects

You may want us to lead

an engagement project.

We have all the

necessary skills to help

you start and complete

an engagement project

that will deliver tangible

results

2Survey Design

You may want us to

design a survey that will

help assess employee

engagement. We have

research skills to ensure

you’re asking the right

questions at the right

time and in the right way

3Strategy

You might want some

advice on how to get

the most out of your

employees. Whether it’s

employee remuneration

or reward initiatives we

can help get you

thinking