One of the biggest indicators of your team health and a reflection of you as a leader is how engaged your people are. Do your team come into work every day with a sense of care and commitment? Or is this just another 9 to 5 job to them?
Companies with high levels of employee engagement perform three to four times better across all key performance measures than those who don’t. People who are engaged come to work to make a difference and as a result, they feel a strong personal connection and responsibility to the company because of the quality of care in the relationship from their employer.
This leads to a greater discretionary effort from those employees which is in turn proven to be one of the most important drivers in overall company performance.
In simple terms, people who are engaged are coming to work for what they can give rather than what they can get. Engagement is about the quality of the relationship between the employer and the employee.
If you want to review how engaged your team are as the New Year approaches and determine any changes you might need to make in 2019, start by reviewing these 3 core engagement metrics.
One: Conversations
‘Conversations’ are the number one thing leaders should pay attention to when trying to quickly understand a company’s current level of employee engagement.
Pay attention, be mindful and listen to the conversations that are occurring in and across your company. This is the easiest way to work out whether your employees like being part of your company and feel equipped to make a contribution.
When comes to assessing the quality of conversations, think about these three things:
- Are your people actually talking to each other?
- What are they talking about?
- How are they talking about it?
Read more on assessing conversations taking place at work here.
Two: Care
The level of ‘Care’ shown by employees is the second most important thing leaders should pay attention to when trying to quickly understand a company’s current level of employee engagement.
When people are engaged at work they are more emotionally committed to the success of the company.
Pay attention to the behaviours and outcomes of people in the organisation to see whether they are reflective of employees who truly value their impact on the company. Are they showing up as the best version of themselves every day? Or is this merely a boring ‘9 to 5’ for them?
Leaders should be looking to see how much care their people are demonstrating in their daily approach to work and their interaction with others.
Questions you can ask to determine people’s level of care include:
- Are people proactive and curious?
- How available and responsive are people?
- Do they strive for quality and timeliness?
Read more on determining employees’ care factor here.
Three: Commitment
This final part on ‘Commitment’ is about how genuinely committed the permanent, casual and contracted team members, as well as suppliers, to overall company success. Leaders and managers should pay attention and consider the three ways to establish the true level of commitment within a team or organisation.
- Are they advocates?
- How long do they stay and do they return?
- Do they undertake their own personal training?
Read more on determining employees’ level of commitment here.
So there you have it – the three high-level indicators of employee engagement – conversations, commitment and care. Take some time out over the next few weeks to honestly assess where your team scale in each of these areas.
