The Essential Guide to Employee Engagement

Seven Steps for Building an Effective CSR Program 2

Have you everconsidered......how much money it may be costing you to leave a serious business problem unsolved?

There are literally hundreds of problems that could face any business at any time in this unpredictable economy. But one particularly costly problem faced by many businesses is actually well within their power to fix.

What is it?

This persistent, but ultimately solvable, problem is a lack of employee engagement.

To fully understand this problem, we’re going to briefly discuss:

• What employee engagement is

• Why it’s so vitally important

• What your company can do to help your employees become more engaged

• Why building a strong, strategic corporate philanthropy program can be the single most effective means of achieving that treasured goal

Seven Steps for Building an Effective CSR Program 3

About UsFrontStream is a leading provider of corporate philanthropy software and services that enable companies to drive a measurable increase in their giving, matching, and volunteering.

Our experienced team helps businesses improve their speed and performance with moving donor dollars, save time on administrative tasks, and quantify results through advanced reporting and analytics.

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Part 1What is Employee Engagement

Part 1What is Employee Engagement?

And that is a solid definition of an employee who is fully engaged:

When you think about the very best employees in your company, what qualities stand out? These people are your top performers, of course. But they’re more than that. They’re also role models. They know how to “rally the troops” and get people excited about projects or changes in process.

They work hard, but they do so consistently, not in fits and starts. Their effort is driven by a strong sense of loyalty, not just to the company itself, but to what the company is striving to accomplish.

They have bought into the company mission.

Engaged Employee

A fully engaged employee is driven by a sense of loyalty and mission to perform their job to the very best of their ability day in and day out, with continual improvement a priority.

Emotionally Committed

They are not simply showing up for work every day. They’re emotionally committed to their own success and that of their department, division, team . . . of the entire company.

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Part 1What is Employee Engagement?

Emotionally Committed

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Granted, it’s not possible for every employee to be fully engaged every

day. Personal lives come into the mix and everyone has a bad day now and then. But a

company has a great deal of control over how engaged their employees are as a matter of

course, and there are powerful tangible and intangible reasons for this to be

one of the top priorities for your company’s leadership.

Part 1What is Employee Engagement?

Why is employee engagement so important?

Time and again, numerous studies have proven that an engaged employee—one who truly cares about his or her work and enjoys making a contribution to the company’s success—can be one of the finest investments an organization can make.

On the other hand, an employee who is not engaged, who is simply bored with the job, or uninterested in excelling—or, worse yet, an employee who is actively disengaged, who is angry, frustrated and potentially hostile to the organization—can cost the company a tremendous amount.

Note some of these mind-blowing statistics, as highlighted in a revealing infographic created by ADP.

• Companies with world-class employee engagement are 12% more profitable and 18% more productive than their competitors with less engaged employees.

• Those engaged employees are 57% more effective at their jobs, and 87% less likely to leave the company.

• The typical cost of turnover—a much bigger problem at companies with low employee engagement—is between 48% and 61% of the employee’s annual salary.

• On average, companies with low employee engagement lose about $2,246 every year per disengaged employee.

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Another interesting statistical take on the value of employee engagement comes from executive trainer John Spence’s blog, based on a landmark study conducted by Gallup:

• Fully engaged employees earn their employers an average of 120% of their salary in value.

• This is in comparison with 80% in value from disengaged employees and 60% in value from actively disengaged employees.

• The resulting loss— to the American economy alone—was estimated at over $350 billion every year!

So, if your company is currentlypaying less-than-fully engaged

employees, you are actively losing money on that investment.

Part 1What is Employee Engagement?

For any business looking to make a profit or attain financial goals, that fact alone should make leadership sit up and take notice.

But, there are also many less tangible—but still important—effects that companies have noted in connection with employee engagement. A company that fosters an environment promoting a high level of employee engagement reaps the following self-replicating benefits:

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So, it’s obvious that strong employee engagement has both a tangible

effect on a company’s profitability, and an intangible effect on how

pleasant and productive an environment the company enjoys.

This leads to the next logical question...

Improved Morale

Employees that enjoy coming to work and like what they’re doing and why they’re doing it simply have more fun on the job. Their enthusiasm and positive attitude are contagious and tend to weed out those employees who don’t “fit in” and share their level of engagement.

Loyalty

Engaged employees are far less likely to be looking for another job in their free time, and are instead more likely to be thinking about how to make the job they love even better. With that kind of loyalty-based thinking comes creative and innovative ideas to improve productivity and profitability.

Excellent Company Reputation

The more engaged your employees are, the more likely they are to share this with their friends and professional networks. That leads organically to higher-quality employees seeking to join the company and get in on this fantastic atmosphere, making recruiting more-engaged employees and strengthening the organization an easier proposition. (Think about those consistent “Best Companies to Work For” like Google or Wegman’s Food. Those companies don’t have to go to the ends of the Earth for quality employees.)

Part 2What Can YourCompany Do To Help Your Employees Become More Engaged?

Part 2What Can Your Company do to Help Your Employees Become More Engaged?

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Emotionally Committed

This topic is far too deep and rich to cover comprehensively in just a few pages, so consider the following list of essential tips as a

30,000-foot view of the many options availvable to companies wishing to improve their level

of employee engagement.

Part 2What Can Your Company do to Help Your Employees Become More Engaged?

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Hire the Right People

To a large extent, engagement is a product of the employee’s personality. People who are naturally passionate, energetic, and take pride in their work are more likely to be engaged employees.

While these traits can be nurtured, and made to thrive in the right environment, they cannot be created or developed through training or policy.

So, be sure your hiring process includes screening for that intangible spark that tells you this candidate has the potential to truly get fired up about taking on the role in question.

Keep Employees Abreast of Expectations & Performance

To be fully engaged in their work, employees must feel that they understand what is expected of them and are comfortable with how they are performing in relation to those expectations.

If the only time your employees hear about what is expected and where they excel or could improve is during their annual evaluation, chances are slim they are going to remain fully engaged in the interim.

On the other hand, employees who receive feedback—both positive and constructive—on a regular basis, weekly or even daily, are far more likely to care about keeping their performance at or above expectations each time they come to work.

Communicate Your Company Mission & Values Effectively

Employee engagement requires that your employees are able to unite under a common theme bigger and deeper than the fact that their paychecks are signed by the same person.

A strong company mission provides that common core theme, and the organization’s values and culture provide the framework for different personalities to pull together in a unified effort to accomplish that mission.

However, if the mission is too vague, too mundane, unachievable, or unknown, it cannot serve that purpose.

Keep Employees Abreast of Expectations & Performance

Sometimes, a company can inadvertently limit their employees’ ability to get fully engaged in their work by adhering too strictly to established policies or procedures rather than nurturing an environment where creativity and innovation are encouraged and celebrated.

If your employees feel there’s no room in the company’s culture for developing a better way to accomplish a goal, or if the bureaucratic hurdles they need to jump are too high, they’ll soon give up trying to improve things, and will settle into the habit of just doing what’s required . . . a sure recipe for disengagement.

Instead, encourage employees at all levels of the organization to maintain a forward-thinking, innovative eye on their jobs and make implementing good ideas a quick and rewarding process for everyone involved.

That encourages engagement on every level.(continued on next pg...)

Part 2What Can Your Company do to Help Your Employees Become More Engaged?

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Place a Priority on Reward and Recognition

Classically, a monetary raise and/or a promotion serve as the carrot dangled in front of all employees. And these are definitely forms of reward and recognition that most employees will appreciate.

But be careful not to limit your rewards program to just those two items, since it would not be practical or possible for every positive action taken by a fully engaged workforce to be rewarded in that way. And failing to reward and recognize positive actions will quickly dampen the spirits of the employees who put their heart and soul into making them happen.

So, instead, get creative about how your employees will be recognized for their contributions and how you will reward them. Remember that even small things like a thumbs-up and a smile can have a huge impact on an employee’s level of job satisfaction and engagement.

Making recognition a public affair—without creating embarrassment—can also do wonders.

Many companies make it a habit to post the names of high performers, innovative thinkers, and those who excel at customer service so others in the organization are aware of their exemplary work. “Employee of the Month” awards and the like can serve this purpose as long as the employees truly view them to be sincere indications of leadership’s praise and encouragement rather than arbitrary popularity contests.

Similarly, recognizing positive organizational accomplishments in the right way can further cement the employees’ feeling that each of them had an integral share in producing a desired outcome. Word these announcements as sincere “thank yous” instead of generic facts.

Create a Positive Work Environment

A work environment that encourages employee engagement fosters trust, respect, and mutual appreciation. Maintaining these feelings requires open communication, flexibility, and a high level of autonomy or freedom.

This kind of environment cannot exist if leadership is not fully on-board, or if the Employee Handbook hasn’t been rewritten since the 1950s. It’s a completely different paradigm from the environment our grandparents worked in, but some companies have been slow to make the necessary changes.

Realizing that your employees have lives outside the office that mean as much to them—if not more—than their lives inside the office will go a long way toward establishing and maintaining that positive work environment. Gone are the days when unbalanced workaholism can be rewarded and requests for flexibility ignored.

Instead, to nurture employee engagement, companies must create an environment that sends the overall message: “You are important to the success of this company, and we want you as happy and comfortable as possible.”

(continued on next pg...)

Part 2What Can Your Company do to Help Your Employees Become More Engaged?

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Encourage “Team Spirit”

You needn’t resort to “trust falls” or zip lines to build a team. But you do need to make a conscious effort to invest the time to bring people together and get them all on the same page.

Often, circumstances where a previously engaged employee has begun performing poorly or exhibiting traits of disengagement can be traced back to some sort of personality conflict with a co-worker or supervisor that has gone unaddressed.

Stay on the lookout for anything that could hinder the ability of your employees to work together effectively and make an effort to create opportunities for teams to be strengthened both formally (through project management) and informally (through events and efforts outside the office).

The Bottom Line

Again, this list of tips has only scratched the surface, but it goes to show the breadth of options available to companies looking to improve employee engagement. With creativity and a focus on improvement, you can no doubt come up with many other ways to do so in your own company.

One means of improving employee engagement has proven itself to be extremely effective because it combines many of these tactics into an over-arching strategy that helps individual employees, the entire organization, and the community at large.

What is it?

Part 3Corporate Philanthropy: The Single Most Effective Means of Achieving Employee Engagement.

Part 3 Corporate Philanthropy: The Single Most Effective Means of Achieving Employee Engagement

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Emotionally Committed

Why is corporate philanthropy—formal corporate giving programs and

employee volunteering—such a powerful force behind employee engagement?

Consider how an effective and strategic corporate giving program creates and

maintains the environment necessary for high levels of employee engagement:

Part 3 Corporate Philanthropy: The Single Most Effective Means of Achieving Employee Engagement

Seven Steps for Building an Effective CSR Program 16

Corporate Giving Establishes and Supports a Strong Common Goal

When setting up a corporate philanthropy program, a company should choose one or more causes that aligns with the company’s established mission, vision, values, and culture. By doing so, the company provides employees with a tangible goal that supports that common mission they should be unitedly trying to accomplish.

This enhances teamwork, offers a feel-good reason for solidarity and mutual encouragement, and offers innumerable opportunities for positive feedback and recognition.

Employee Volunteer Programs Provide Freedom and Recognition

As already noted, engaged employees feel trusted and are comfortable thinking outside the box and using their creativity and innovation to accomplish a goal.

By setting up an employee volunteer program that allows employees to volunteer their time toward worthy causes either on or off the clock, the company affirms that message loud and clear. The employee is given the freedom to accomplish good for the community while still fulfilling work obligations, and to do so in a way that promotes balance and health.

Recognizing employees for their volunteer efforts also enhances their engagement as they are able to associate their accomplishments with the arrangements set up by the company.

Corporate Giving as a Team-building Exercise

Many volunteer activities require working together with a group of volunteers to accomplish something no one person could have accomplished. As such, they offer excellent team-building opportunities for your employees.

As an example, while thousands of companies send executives and employees to Las Vegas each year for conferences or retreats where any number of team-building exercises are performed, one enterprising car dealership decided to have the team build a house through Habitat for Humanity’s Vegas branch instead.

No doubt seeing the smiles on the faces of the family they helped will stay with that team longer than conversations over the free buffet at The Bellagio.

Corporate Philanthropy Helps Employees Think Big

Through their corporate philanthropy programs, companies have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of millions. These initiatives have the power to bring attention and resources to critical issues globally and in the local community, even saving lives.

Those kinds of opportunities don’t often arise in employees’ personal lives, especially for those who were not raised in families that regularly volunteered. Simply being offered the chance to be involved in something with so much potential can mean the world to an employee who wants to make a difference.

That employee is likely to be far more engaged with the company that made it possible.

(continued on next pg...)

Part 3 Corporate Philanthropy: The Single Most Effective Means of Achieving Employee Engagement

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Corporate Giving Programs Can Focus on Causes That Matter to the Employees

While it’s important for corporate giving programs to align with company values and mission, wise leadership will offer a variety of options to their workforce in order to commit to a cause that the employees feel strongly about.

As an example, May was National Stroke Awareness Month. According to the National Stroke Association, 425,000 women suffer from stroke every year and millions more are at risk. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Labor states that women comprise nearly half of the entire work force. These data suggest that at some point, the issue of strokes among women will have a direct impact on many of the people in your company.

Building a corporate philanthropy initiative around a cause that directly affects your employees on a deeper personal level encourages them to participate in those efforts, and helps them engage with the company more fully.

Corporate Philanthropy Just Feels Good

Above and beyond all the other tangible and intangible benefits, getting involved in giving back to the community just feels good.

Few other opportunities allow your employees the same level of heartfelt positive feelings in connection with your company and their co-workers as joining together to do good for the community through a formal company giving program or employee volunteering effort.

Part 4What Should You Do With This Information?

Step 3What Should You Do With This Information?

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We encourage you to accept the importance of employee engagement.

It’s not just a matter of your workers being happy during the work day.

It’s also a matter of productivity, profitability, public relations, customer satisfaction, and your company’s overall reputation in the marketplace.

We would also like to recommend you consider establishing a corporate philanthropy program as a means of boosting employee engagement in your company. FrontStream offers a comprehensive corporate philanthropy management software package that can make that process simple and painless.

www.frontstream.com

Thank You