The benefits of an engaged workforce extend to almost every aspect of business performance. Great organizations understand the impact of employee engagement and invest in enabling a positive work culture.
And companies that measure and track employee engagement have a greater chance at adapting to disruption and coming out unscathed in times of turmoil. They are faster at getting teams onboard with changes because they have the systems in place to communicate clearly and set expectations.
If you’re on the fence about whether prioritizing employee engagement at the core of your business strategy is critical, then let’s look at the overall impact of employee engagement on your business.
Employee Engagement Defined
To fully understand the impact of employee engagement, it helps to start with a baseline for what we are talking about here. Employee engagement is the level of connection employees feel toward the organization and the work that they do.
Commitment and motivation are key factors of engagement, and they exist when people are aligned with the company values and goals within the organization. Resources, transparency, and strong communication also play a role in how employees feel about their company.
The Impact of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is crucial to any organization because of the impact it has on specific areas like innovation, productivity, efficiency, and yes — even overall business costs. But it helps keep employees happy, genuinely interested in the success of their work and company, and keeps them involved with the company values, mission, and reputation.
Let’s look at some of these areas further and some additional ways employee engagement impacts your business positively.
1. Secures Employee Retention
People that feel a strong connection to their company’s core values and goals are more likely to want to stay long-term at a company.
If you identify the different types of employee engagement at a business, you’ll find that the more actively engaged employees have a strong emotional connection to the business and their teammates.
They feel committed to the business vision and have a stake in seeing projects through to completion. And teams that feel integrated and responsible for each other’s success drive retention rates up.
Businesses with a strong learning culture enjoy employee engagement and retention rates around 30-50% higher than those that don’t.
When a team or department starts to see a lot of turnover that can have a negative effect on overall company health.
Losing employees is not only a loss of resources, it’s also a loss of knowledge and productivity.
All of the hours spent to train and integrate a new employee are lost, and it can impact morale across the company if there is an exodus of employees.
Replacing an employee costs money so keeping an engaged workforce also has a financial impact by saving your HR team costs for recruiting and onboarding.
2. Increases Workplace Productivity
Engaged workers are often the strongest performers and go above and beyond their job description. This leads to an increase in employee productivity and project success.
Gallup found that companies with higher employee engagement saw a 21% increase in productivity compared to those with lower engagement.
Whether it’s for internal meetings or client-facing presentations, people that are more engaged at work will be more enthusiastic when completing tasks and respond at faster rates. That will translate into higher rates of productivity in any department.
Those that are more satisfied with their job and have a clear trajectory for career development will show more enthusiasm for completing their work.
If communication is strong across an organization there will be less confusion around goals and priorities, that can also lead to adapting faster to change and necessary pivots.
When 44% of employees do not understand their impact or are unaware of business goals, there is a gap between the leadership and employees about what’s important and how they contribute value.
Higher employee engagement sets businesses up for success by enabling more agile workforces that are dedicated to improving processes that benefit productivity.
3. Drives innovation
Two characteristics of engaged workforces are strong communication and direct understanding of an employee’s contribution to business performance. These factors are directly related to the impact of employee engagement on developing better products and making better business decisions.
When teams with varying skill sets work together to come up with solutions to new challenges, companies often see more creative product solutions and innovative strategies.
For example, an engaged workforce will have clear expectations around how they will individually contribute to company success and how they can also work with other teams.
This collaborative approach takes advantage of the strengths and skills from different teams at an organization and can lead to an increased feeling of accountability across the organization.
4. Improves Customer Satisfaction
The impact of employee engagement is also directly linked to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction.
Research shows that companies that excel at customer experience have 1.5 times more engaged employees than companies with poor customer experience.
When employees are highly engaged and happier with their work, the tendency is that they go above and beyond when interacting with customers. When you have happy customers, you build better business relationships and increase the level of customers advocating on your brands’ behalf.
5. Greater Profitability
When you add up the saved costs from better employee retention and the increases in productivity and better business decisions, businesses find themselves earning more profit and seeing more success.
The Gallup study that tracks employee engagement in the U.S. found significant proof that the companies with greater employee engagement were 21% more profitable than the ones with low levels.
Yes, it may take investment and getting the right tools and systems in place to enable a culture at a business that prioritizes employee engagement. But the more that your employees are engaged, the stronger your employer brand will be to attract talent that will also be engaged.
Companies that invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than those that don’t. So there is clearly value in setting up the support and resources your team needs to stay engaged.
When employees are informed and highly engaged, they are also more likely to participate in marketing initiatives and become brand advocates.
All of the social media marketing and brand building that your company implements have the potential for greater reach and driving more ROI when employees are involved in them.
Tools for Keeping Employees Engaged
To reap the above benefits of an engaged workforce, it’s important for companies to invest in the tools and resources that can help employees feel valued and supported.
The EveryoneSocial platform is a strong option for creating communications connections with employees to see the impact of employee engagement on your business.
EveryoneSocial allows for everyone at a company – senior leadership, middle managers, entry level employees, and frontline workers – to share better, provide feedback, and recognize each other for their accomplishments.
Employees have a centralized hub for access to the latest company content, industry news, information about new initiatives, and recruiting updates.
To draw attention to important posts and announcements, users can send push notifications and email alerts for specific content. Push notifications help employees stay on top of exciting updates no matter where they are working, which helps enable employee engagement by keeping everyone in the loop.
The platform makes it easy to implement the employee engagement strategies that will most benefit your teams and business performance.
