does the duty to inspire employees lie with HR?

Forging an emotional connection between an employee and an organization is often viewed as the duty of the HR department.  Every time a survey shows a drop in employee engagement levels, HR is the first to be blamed. But feelings such as inspiration vary with experiences. By that measure, HR is only one part of an employee’s experience. Here are some other organizational facets that can influence employee experiences, either inspiring or demotivating them.

Leadership

Inspiring employees is a shared responsibility between the HR and the leadership. While articulating a compelling message around a company’s vision lies with the leadership, HR’s responsibility is to weave actionable initiatives around those messages. Leaders often set the tone for shaping a company’s culture.  Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, devised what is called “Purposeful Darwinism,” a strategy that upholds personal accountability to furthering company’s goals, thereby establishing a highly competitive culture. HR’s involvement is at the initiative level, helping employees buy into the bigger vision of the company. It is responsible for tying people’s goals to the company’s vision, and ensuring that their contribution to the company’s vision is recognized. 

 

Managers

Research shows companies where employees decide to go the extra mile for their organization’s success are more efficient and effective. Managers can play a critical role in driving this ‘citizenship behavior’ of going above and beyond what is expected of them by creating an engaging environment. Companies with engaged employees have been known to outperform those without by 202%.   Managers meet with employees on a daily basis and have the opportunity to keep employees motivated long after the CEO’s pep talk. They add the ‘human element’ to management by connecting with the team, and creating a culture of shared trust and accountability. In essence, managers know their team’s deepest strengths and weaknesses, making them the primary force to build an engaged and productive team.

Marketers

Branding teams often exhaust their bandwidth in sensitizing their external customers about a company’s values and offerings. This approach ignores the other part of the equation – the employees.  Creating an appropriate brand perception among employees is just as important as they have the ‘inside’ scoop on a brand. Work constitutes an important element of an employee’s social interaction. How do you influence employees to carry positive messages externally? Take a leaf from the UK based commercial television channel ITV’s marketing playbook. During the launch of its new unit ITVBe, ITV used videos of its own employees who described how they identified with the channel – an act that made the ITV staff feel deeply connected to the brand while at the same time promoting the brand externally.

Technology

Data shows that a sustained culture of recognition significantly reduces employee turnover by 17.7%. New age tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) are vital in helping organizations draw actionable insights aimed at improving employee engagement. Many are turning to what is called AI-driven sentiment analysis of employee feedback to better understand how employees feel and help them resolve their issues.



As technology becomes more entrenched in driving employee and workplace connections, HR has a key role in coordinating the different facets influencing employee inspiration. The best way to do this is to lead with empathy using contextual messaging and by recognizing employee successes in a timely manner.

Source: https://hbr.org/2017/09/how-to-motivate-employees-to-go-beyond-their-jo…

https://www.business2community.com/human-resources/key-employee-engagem…

http://www.synergycreative.co.uk/latest-articles/the-10-best-internal-c…

https://www.randstad.in/workforce360/archives/five-things-you-can-do-th…