The Key to Employee Engagement: Knowing Where to Start

  • Employee Engagement
Ali Payne

If I were to ask you right now how engaged you think your employees are, what would your answer be? I’ll give you a hint, the actual answer is far less. What we’ve found is that most employers believe their workforce has a 60 percent employee engagement level. Unfortunately, that’s quite a bit higher than the actual 33 percentage that’s more reflective of an actual workplace.

So, what’s the problem? I can tell you it’s not that you’re not trying. I know for a fact employers spend a lot of time and energy working on ways to drive employee engagement. That’s awesome! Where the problem comes in is that employers don’t actually know how to measure if the efforts are working and, perhaps, are simply just starting in the wrong place. I think we have to evaluate our own engagement as an organization before we can impact our employee engagement.

Allow me to elaborate. Think about the hospitality industry. They have to be engaged at every step of the customer journey. When you walk into a hotel or restaurant, it’s all about the experience — from the front desk staff to the concierge to the staff member you ride up on the elevator with. Each is a different part that impacts your entire experience. Even little things, like a smile, a hello, or calling you by your first name makes a huge difference. Don’t you think we can all learn from those little nuggets?

So, back to my main point. If we, as leaders, are trying to evaluate the engagement levels of our talent, shouldn’t we first be looking at the bigger picture before trying to change how our employees feel? With our new ethOs company, we believe you need to start with organizational engagement before you can impact employee engagement. How you go about doing that is the key to driving success.

Not sure how to do that? We can help! Our ethOs team can help you dive deep to elevate the greater experience. Reach out to us today to learn more!

January 6, 2020