Employee engagement and employee health are intertwined—and solving them both is critical to your business. That was the message of a recent webinar by Buck Consultants, “Securing Employee Engagement: More Vital Than Ever.”
In the session, Ruth Hunt, principal, communication, with Buck Consultants, and Scot Marcotte, managing director, talent and HR solutions, with Buck Consultants, discussed the troublesome issue of poor employee engagement. The message: employers need to consider not only whether employees are engaged with their work but also whether they’re engaged in maintaining their own health.
Low numbers
Employee engagement is at a critical low in Canada. A series of surveys carried out in 2010 and 2011 by think tanks such as BlessingWhite, Towers Watson, Herman Group, Deloitte and the Conference Board have shown that less than 30% of employees are currently engaged and 50% are currently unsatisfied with their jobs and/or are ready to leave.
At the surface, this is a detriment to your business. Poor engagement leads to decreased employee loyalty, commitment, creativity and productivity—which, in turn, negatively impacts customer satisfaction and overall revenue growth. However, it’s also a detriment to your employees’ health. Disengagement is linked to depression, heightened stress levels and increased risk of heart disease. And, if an employee feels that his or her employer is not committed to encouraging the employee’s health and well-being, that disengagement plummets even further.
As such, it’s critical that employers demonstrate that they are actively committed to employee engagement and employee health.
Understand your employee value proposition
Employers need to recognize that the employment relationship is no longer the paternalistic one it once was. It’s a two-way street, in which what an employee gets from his or her employer is just as important as what the employer gets from the employee. An effective employee value proposition articulates what the organization expects from employees and what employees can expect in return. And it enhances the ability to attract, retain and motivate employees.
Great communication
Hunt offered examples of good, better and best communication techniques for engaging with your employees and encouraging them to maintain their health.
- Good communication is brief, easy to read and encourages participation. Initiatives could include healthy-cooking contests, interactive postcards with games or quizzes, for example, mailed home for the employee’s entire family to see, or online videos from the C-suite.
- Better communication is multi-channel, easy to access and social. Examples include offering tablet versions of online training sessions, using social networking to interact with employees or hosting a virtual benefits fair.
- Best communication is that which is highly convenient and personalized to the individual. This includes mobile apps and personalized online portals that focus on the employee’s data, not generic information, and help to guide the employee in maintaining his or her own health.
Audience of one
When you want to send a message to employees, personalization is key. “You need to reach that audience of one,” says Marcotte.
He suggests applying traditional marketing theory and creating a customer profile for your employees. The profile should include data on their preferences, their behaviours and their responses; you can then use that information to guide your communication about benefits plans, as well as day-to-day messaging.
Employee engagement is “not just a nice-to-have,” says Hunt. With the economic turmoil of recent years, many employers have put engagement on the back burner, worried that it’s all they can do to avoid laying off employees, let alone engaging with them. However, such an outlook only encourages further disengagement, which, in turn, can affect your employees’ health and your organization as a whole.