Recently, an eCommerce business approached our job portal with a unique issue and demand. HR managers were looking for talent but with a surety of loyalty.
They intended to sign an employment contract with bonds of at least three years. We published the job ads according to their expectations by highlighting the matter of contracts.
The response of job ads was meagre, and a few candidates had applied for it. During the interview process, our representative took an active part, and we got insights into the problem with some extra efforts.
Our findings were pointing toward only one issue, and it was the absence of effective employee engagement policies or strategies. The client business was not thinking about it seriously, and the HR department did not have complete ideas to formulate and implement one by investing time, resources, and money on it.
Below are reasons why the engagement strategy isn’t working for most of businesses and companies, despite heavy investment on it by a majority of companies.
What is Employee Engagement Strategy?
I would like to first clear the concept of employee engagement strategy.
Employee Engagement Strategy means to create a positive emotional connection between employees and the company.
Benefits of Employee Engagement Strategy
This increasing likelihood brings tons of benefits to your organisation, such as:
- High productivity
- Better retention
- A sense of health and well-being
- Attracts talent
- Improved bottom line
Why Isn’t Employee Engagement Strategy Working?
There are top five (5) fundamental reasons for improving employee engagement, and when a company lacks any of those, a definite failure is set to occur. Let’s check those five reasons that lead to failure of employee engagement strategy.
No.1 – Employees Are Unclear about the Mission & Vision of the Company
What does the top management do when formulating the vision and mission of the company? They only involve the top strata, like CEO, MD, and Co-founder, level of people in it. They sometimes paint on a board and place it in the main office where the reach of bottom level employees is a nightmare! Of course, they place it in the ‘About Us’ web page of the company website, but hardly anyone cares to read it and digest all.
Thus, the majority of employees don’t know for which ‘Matter’ they are working, and the company beliefs. Employees only think of their goals, and have no inspiration to invest in outcomes that the company wishes for.
No.2 – Employees Missing an Ideal Work Culture
When an employee of a company senses that he or she belongs to the best workplace culture, the employee starts believing in the company as a family. A good work culture fosters friendship between like-minded people.
Simply encouraging mate-ship leads to internal politics, and biased groupings start there. A good workplace culture respects each employee equally, irrespective of gender (Anti-feminists issues), religions, colour, and race.
No.3 – Employees Find NO Help to Grow
Practical learning is a different thing in professional life where academic or bookish learning hardly helps in this fast-growing digital age. The company must have a skill-improvement program, training program, and consultation desk. Thus, employees can obtain proper guidance, learning tools, information, and processes within the company and grow in a particular direction.
No.4 – Employees Missing Recognition
People strive for the right recognition. If your company management fails to recognise true contributions and contributors frequently, a sense of disappointment prevails among the workforce. It can lead to low-productivity and low-engagement.
There are a lot of employee recognition programs prevailing in the corporate world. If your company misses out on giving trophies, awards, plaques, certificates, thank you note/say on different occasions, and lastly ceremonies things can get worse as time goes on.
No.5 – Employees Missing Respect from Higher Authority
Ego is a huge thing in a human being and knowingly or unknowingly hurting it can lead to bad consequences. Therefore, your first duty is to show respect to all levels of employees in the organisation.
Respect everyone equally irrespective of their opinions, biases, and views against or in favour of yours. Some clarifications and mentoring can wash their negative psych. So never change your positive attitudes towards all staff members unless they are breaking serious rules and regulations of the company like criminal mind-sets.
Other Reasons:
Some other less significant reasons for failure of your employee engagement strategy are as follows:
- Hardly anyone grasps the idea and purpose of the engagement strategy.
- Most companies believe it as the job of the HR department
- Formulation of the employee engagement strategy takes place at the top level instead of initiating the process from the bottom.
- Direct managers ignore talking directly to the employees and place much weight on survey reports.
- Management has fewer clues to execute strategy righteously.
- No strategy format is decided on.
- No baseline is fixed to start it.
- No benchmark fixed to see the level of engagement.
- No goals fixed.
Now, Who Implements Your Employee Engagement Strategy & How?
It is a big question for every organisation when thinking of planning and implementing an employee engagement strategy. In due course, many experts provide consultancy services in the market.
Author Bio:
Manya Ray is a Marketing & PR Executive for Just Norfolk Jobs and has been since October 2017. Manya has a vast amount of HR & Recruitment experience.