One in three employees are not engaged with their work. It is therefore not surprising that employee engagement has come under the corporate radar. Engaged employees are presumed to be more satisfied, productive and effective as the company’s brand ambassadors. Whilst an engaged employee can infuse enthusiasm in a company, poorly engaged employees can fuel toxic behaviour.
A lot of investment goes into developing strategies to measure and monitor employee engagement. Academic research clearly confirms the link between employee engagement and productivity. Despite all this, it is rather difficult to fuel employee engagement let alone measure it. This is often due to an organization’s lack of understanding of its employees’ engagement needs. Traditional measurement systems evaluate employee engagement from an organisation perspective. They focus on the culture, support and other factors that can dampen employee engagement levels. There is nothing wrong in having a set of expectations about engagement from an organisation perspective, but it is important to view this issue from an employee perspective. By creating measures focusing on these issues, companies attempt to understand where their employees stand.
Businesses should strive to better understand their employees as individuals. It is important to acknowledge that the foundation of employee values, motivators, and priorities has already been built before an employee signs a job contract.
Employees are motivated by three types of engagement: intellectual, emotional and financial. Studies have shown that everyone responds to a unique mix of these forms of engagement. The exact mix is shaped by an individual’s own value system. Effective individual engagement shapes behaviour and as a result influences engagement levels with the organisation. If organisations understand what stimulates engagement in their work force, their strategic initiatives could be more focused and yield better results. For example, an employee who cares about high intellectual engagement would prefer a challenging role. The organization should strive to constantly challenge that employee intellectually.
We often think about customer engagement in terms of satisfaction measures, loyalty measures and of course commitment measures. Studies (both practical and academic) have clearly indicated satisfaction on its own is not a clear indicator of repurchase intentions. Similarly, loyalty is not a true indicator of repurchase intentions.. A satisfied customer might not be loyal and a loyal customer might not be committed. If commitment is a true indicator of repurchase intentions, we should focus on increasing customer engagement.
Customers, like employees, expect different things from their consumer experiences. Effective customer engagement means understanding a business’s target customers and adjusting the business’s CRM strategy toward these individuals’ engagement preferences. For example, a fashion boutique’s customers may care more about service and product quality than price. The store should focus on motivating its employees to provide a high level of customer service.
Ram is the MD for Talengene an organisation that combines decodes strategy to behaviour and links it back to neurology. The approach which he developed from his research for his PhD provides an objective means of understanding a business from the 6 or 7 key strategic perspectives. It entails the correlation of knowledge, requisite skills, traits and behaviours. Ram has elected to use the metaphor of "genetic frameworks" to provide an innovative platform for explaining the approach. He currently runs a HR strategy organisation and operates in the UK and Indian markets. He is currently authoring two books on human capital measurement & employee engagement.
http://www.talengene.com/