how to develop and maintain employee engagement.

Identifying and providing the right conditions for all members of an organization starts with recognizing the importance of employee engagement. Know how to develop and maintain employee engagement with Randstad.

employee engagement: explained

As the name suggests, employee engagement is a point in which employees give an emotional commitment to the organization and feel passionate about their work. Employee engagement feeds motivation, drivers performance, and strengthens relationships.

why is employee engagement important?

Together with other HR and talent solutions, employee engagement emerged as a driving force of businesses in competitive industries. High levels of employee engagement reportedly result in effective talent retention and improved organizational performance. Here are the main factors proving that employee engagement is important:

size matters

Engagement levels reflect organization size—the bigger the organization, the lower the initial engagement level. Engagement issues generally arise when companies reach around 20 employees and may reappear when they reach around 50 staff. Promoting employee engagement can fix this issue, regardless of the company’s size.

leadership

Poor leadership and management play their part in promoting and deteriorating employee engagement, often based on outmoded views that the only motivator of people is pay. Fully engaged leadership and managers are the crucial ingredients for successful employee engagement. Employee engagement and good leadership go hand in hand; they can both motivate employees.

how can companies use employee engagement to acquire talents?

As most candidates’ job application journeys now begin with a search engine, there is a huge potential for businesses to try to build relationships with potential employees before they even think about applying. Here are some easy steps to ensure you are creating the right foundation for a relationship before candidates click to apply.

get valuable content out there

Candidates want to know about your current employees’ experience while working at your company, so you need to offer them this information. They want to know what these workers like and dislike most about the job and the company. By providing this information, you’ll be allowing potential candidates to make informed decisions about whether they want to apply to your company. The more informed the candidate, the more likely they are to be serious about pursuing the opportunity you’re offering and the more likely they are to be the right fit.

promote your company

Once you’ve got all that great content - whether it’s in the form of blogs, video testimonials, or photos of what goes on in the office - you need to work out where to post it for maximum effect. Social media posting is one of the most valuable ways of promoting your brand. You should also think about what forms of content work best on which channels and post accordingly. For example, video content works particularly well on Twitter and Facebook. According to Twitter, video posts are six times more likely to be retweeted than tweets with photos, while over half a billion people watch videos on Facebook every day. Social media has the power to reach passive candidates, too. Those professionals who might not be actively seeking a new position but still follow your organization on various platforms can be some of the best candidates out there. This is because they’re unlikely to be interviewing with other companies and have little reason to lie or stretch the truth about their experience and skills.

engage with potential applicants

One of the most important things you can do to build up employer brand awareness is to engage with potential applicants. Make sure your organization is coming across as approachable - after all, you want to encourage individuals to become candidates. Maintaining the right tone of voice is essential to helping people work out if they think they’d fit into your company culture. Engaging with potential clients can be as simple as launching a Twitter Q&A. You can use this opportunity to gauge candidate sentiment about your company, which will provide important insights into how it is viewed by top talent.

Are you highly regarded by the most qualified and skilled candidates out there, or do you have work to do? You can establish this through engaging with them. Polls are also a useful way of working out how professionals feel about your brand and whether they would consider working there. Twitter has advised businesses to “increase engagement by encouraging your audience to share their opinions, thoughts, and views”. This advice can be applied to any careers-based content you choose to post on your social media accounts.

Twitter also encourages using its polls or asking open-ended questions, which can “tap into the collective curiosity of people interested in your space”. This method will provide you with insight into the opinions held about your brand. According to Twitter, you can then demonstrate that you’re listening by sharing the results with your audience or retweeting answers.

This type of engagement will help potential candidates feel that they are being heard and appreciated, which is a vital facet of employer branding. If you can show that you’re an engaging and responsive brand before candidates have even applied to your company, you’ll set it apart from competitors that are not investing in building relationships with potential applicants.

the state of employee engagement in India

India is one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world, so it’s safe to say that that companies and organizations in the country already understand the importance of employee engagement. But how deep is this understanding? According to psychologist Suresh Arumugam in his study Status of employee engagement In India: A time for reflection, “Indian companies have utilized the concept [of employee engagement] at behavioral level thereby only promoting employee engagement by making the employees participate in some activities.” With that, Arumugan concluded that there is still a need for Indian companies to review their terms of employee engagement and consequently make endeavor towards promoting it.

randstad’s stand in employee engagement in india

Indian companies today face a lot of challenges in acquiring, retaining, and developing talents, so improving employee engagement for existing and potential clients is one of the many steps they need to take to ensure overall company success and ultimately change the way industries acquire and retain talents.

employee engagement resources

Find out our latest opinions and research into employee engagement. Improve your talent development strategies with our help.