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Four ways to find out if your staff are engaged with their work

By rotide
Created 15/05/2019 - 17:59
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However, sometimes, evidence can emerge of the contrary - even if you might have to be well on the ball to spot it. After all, a quarter of workers say they have lied or bent the truth in engagement surveys.

Another eye-opening statistic reported by CIO [1] is that, in a survey of full-time 400 employees working at major organisations, 69% are "open to other opportunities or already seeking their next jobs." Sadly, they would probably never admit so to you, so watch out for these potential warning signs...    

Use one-on-one interviews, not an engagement survey

As we have already seen, engagement surveys could tell you surprisingly little about your workers' investment in your company. Indeed, not everyone might be willing to admit to responding misleadingly to such surveys, so it can't be easy to detect the true scope of the deception.

However, you could still make a start by entirely forgoing those ineffective surveys and instead arranging one-on-one interviews with your workers. When allowed to provide feedback anonymously and conversationally, many workers will be more candid and honest with their input.

Get to know your employees well

How well do you know them already? Probably not as much as you think. According to one survey, 57% of workers believe that their leaders are "detached from the workforce". If you aren't yourself engaged in your workers, their own engagement could quickly fall.

For this reason, it can pay for you to better acquaint yourself with your recruits on a personal - but still professional - level. Through doing this, you could make your staff feel more comfortable with you - and, hence, more willing to indicate issues that could have otherwise led them to quit.

Solicit ideas from staff members

You could have a pleasantly large number of opportunities to do this. Those chances could arise, for example, during a brainstorm session or when you are updating people about what's happening in the company - and want ideas on where the company could go next.

If you find that certain employees are largely mute when you are trying to gather ideas, it could be a sign that the workers in question don't believe you would take on their thoughts anyway or they don't intend to stay with your firm for too much longer, says Insights For Professionals [2].

Keep an eye on employees' social media accounts

Do you follow your workers on social media? If so, seeing an employee take to Facebook or Twitter to complain about your company could initially tempt you to take disciplinary action against that badmouthing worker. However, could they genuinely have a point?

Keep this possibility in mind by asking the employee about the issue. If they have a well-justified grievance, this could be down to an issue that permeates the company culture. Thankfully, if that problem is widespread stress, you could tackle it with employee wellbeing solutions from LifeWorks [3] and so prevent it from further snowballing.


Source URL:
https://www.newbusiness.co.uk/articles/hrpayroll-advice/four-ways-find-out-if-your-staff-are-engaged-with-their-work