Employee Engagement

Understanding why people leave your business and having the strategies in place to deal with issues effectively is crucial if you want to retain your best employees. We're looking at the most common reasons why people choose to move on and how you can ensure your organisation is a place where people can see themselves working long term.

Of course surveys should not be the start and finish of engagement within an organisation, but undertaking employee enagement surveys could be an important part of your employee engagement strategy.

Businesses with an effective employee engagement strategy will be rewarded with greater levels of innovation; increased commitment from employees and, ultimately, better productivity that will impact directly on business performance.

When it comes to the workplace environment it can be difficult to ensure total transparency. The phrase ‘you are the face of the company’ is something that employees often hear, and whilst this is designed to encourage employees to represent the company as best as they can, it is also true.

There has been extensive research over the years that sets out to prove that improving employee satisfaction impacts directly on organisational performance and, ultimately, organisational success. It's certainly true that satisfied staff are likely to result in a satisfied customer base, and satisfied customers directly impact on the bottom line.  

We’re often asked by our clients how their scores compare to other organisations that we have provided employee surveys for. We’ve been using our own ‘engagement index’ for 13 years now, so we’re sharing some of this insight and looking at some other benchmarking resources that might help you determine how you match up to other organisations.

Research shows that a motivated employee is far more productive than one who is not, therefore making sure your team feel happy and supported is not only ‘the right thing to do’, but it is also right for your business.

HR professionals know how vital it is to measure employee engagement and its effect on productivity. This is usually done by an annual employee engagement survey, which although extremely useful for developing actionable plans do have their limitations, which should be recognised.

The data obtained can be limited in value due to the timeliness of the feedback, and only having one occasion a year to garner employee feedback is not usually enough. Using alternative methods to gather this feedback can bring surprising results.

For many of those setting up home in South Africa, Lewis Furniture Retail Stores is typically the first stop they make to buy everything from a new sofa, bed or wardrobe, or even a washing machine or TV. With 350 stores spread across rural and South African urban centres, customers are never far away from one of its outlets.

UPP undertook its first staff survey in July 2011 and has continued every year since. They have been incredibly successful in obtaining high response rates, employing a number of tactics to ensure staff are aware of the survey and the benefits of completing it.